YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. The Government of Armenia will follow the truth in the Amulsar issue, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a news conference in Vanadzor.

“I would like to formalize the common stance of mine and the government regarding the Amulsar issue. We are saying that in this issue we must follow the truth to the end, and the truth itself must bring us to a given decision. And in terms of truths I also attach much importance that the public doesn’t give in to manipulations, including from my highly beloved and respected friends. Because when any citizen takes some device and goes somewhere and says – now I will measure the radiation and it will turn out that some radiation background exists here, or that carnage will now begin in Armenia – I find this to be manipulations. Why am I telling to open the roads leading to the mine, because I find that a government exists in Armenia which will factually close the roads if such necessity would exist, and it will open them if such necessity would exist. I do not accept the viewpoint when they say – doesn’t matter, it is going to be this way, period, there is no other way. If an activist can say such things, the government can’t, because the government is a body whose actions must rely on law, be lawful, stem from the law and the Constitution.

The PM brough the example of Teghut.

“When I was on vacation there was a great deal of talk about the Teghut tailings dam, when I went to work on the first day after the vacation and Cabinet members entered my office they said you gotta make a decision on halting the Teghut mine operations because there is a problem, it is collapsing, the tailings dam will collapse and will result in thousands of fatalities and so on. What did I do? I dispatched relevant inspectorates to a inspection, they came back and guaranteed that the dam will not collapse in the foreseeable future, and in terms of an unforeseeable future a study must take place,” the PM said, adding that the operator has obliged to carry out an international-level study for the long-term. “I was very much interested for the Teghut mine to be opened, because I understood that this mine, when it was left unattended in such condition, was an ecological problem in itself, and it was necessary for a concrete entity to exist for the government to be able to put concrete demands before it. And in addition, we had promised to these people that their workplaces will be restored. And now I know that there is an audit done by an international company which has made conclusions regarding the dam’s reliability and as a result of discussions we have reached a conclusion that this document could’ve been born through conjunctive motives. And I say again, if our very environmental partners were correct, when a 2-3 magnitude earthquake took place in Teghut region this dam should’ve collapses long ago. Now who will apologize and say I was wrong? No one will, on the contrary they will defend what they had said, they are gonna say he is corrupt, they will say my youngest daughter Arpi has 50% shares in Teghut. They will say anything, they will say the last blatant lies only not to say sorry, we were wrong,” the PM said.

Continuing on Lydian, the PM said: “Moreover, many are now saying that the government has made a decision to issue permission. The government hasn’t made such a decision, the permission was issued before us, now the government must answer to two questions – are there grounds to revoke this permission or not? If yes, it will be cancelled, if not it won’t”. The PM added that otherwise the Armenian international economic rating will be impacted.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan