President Serzh Sargsyan convoked session of National Security Council

YEREVAN, 13 FEBRUARY, ARMENPRESS.President of the Republic of Armenia, Chairman of the National Security Council Serzh Sargsyanconvoked today a session of the National Security Council of the Republic of Armenia.

As the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of the Structure to the Office of the President of the Republic of Armenia reports to “Armenpress”, the President mentioned the following in his opening remarks addressed to the participants of the session:“For nearly a quarter of a century, our country has been taking a difficult path to the functioning of democratic institutions. Nation-building has been hinged on rule of law, freedom of speech, political pluralism and other fundamental principles that have never been called into question. Of course, unfortunately, there have been times when these principles have been more of a declarative nature and haven’t corresponded to the reality. At the same time, we have always realized that there are values that are above personal interests, the interests of a group, the interests of a political party and other interests. One of the most important of those values is the ensuring of tranquility and solidarity within the country, which is becoming even more valuable in the light of current regional and geopolitical developments.

The ensuring of this value itself also implies the presence of a political struggle, as well as the application of other measures that are well-known in a democratic society for the expression and protection of different kinds of interests.

However, recently the attempts and intentions of individuals to move the issues on the agenda out of the framework of political processes and provide other solutions to those issues have become more emphasized. The evaluations given to the corresponding actions and the analyses about those actions have mainly been political analyses and evaluations.

I believe the time has come to discuss such actions and the phenomena linked to those actions from the perspective of national security as well. Our objective is to evaluate to what extent the current threats put the vitally important interests of people, the society and the state at risk and to form a general approach to the measures for neutralizing those threats.

This in no way means that the government has not had a certain attitude towards several important issues for the regular activities of society or that it is formulating new positions.

In particular, the government has never encouraged ambiguous campaigns targeted at violence, whether good or bad, even though that is not an issue at this moment, it has tried to oversee the legitimacy of the emergence of financial resources, has reacted to the use of suspicious financial resources for political purposes and has regularly counter-influenced the disproportionate use of technical and organizational opportunities for the protection of private interests.

Of course, all this is a component of the daily activities of competent state authorities, but when such negative phenomena are joined and served for the interests that go against the country’s national security, there has to be a fundamentally different attitude towards that. As to how the attitude should be, we will discuss that today.”

The discussions during the session of the National Security Council led to the formation of a general approach to evaluating phenomena posing a threat to national security and to taking adequate measures when those phenomena become dangerous. The NSC members shared the view that the measures for neutralizing any threat to the national security of the Republic of Armenia must be in line with the standards of legitimacy and justice.