YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 26, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian has said that at the 2020 Cybertech Europe conference Armenian enterprises will also participate.

“We had an invitation from the largest cybersecurity conference of Europe, where I had the chance to deliver a speech and present Armenia,” Sarkissian told reporters.

“As a result, Armenian companies will participate and represent Armenia at the conference next year. 40-50 global leading companies were participating at the conference, which didn’t include Armenian ones. While our presence is necessary, in order to be able to understand how the market works, and learn from the seniors. I hope that a year later we will organize a major cybersecurity conference in Armenia also,” he told reporters.

Speaking about his ATOM initiative (Advanced Tomorrow), Sarkissian noted that preliminary agreements exist with Dassault, Thales, Siemens, IBM, Leonardo and Electronica regarding launching scientific-research training programs in Armenia.

“They understand that if they want to work in our country for a long time then they must continuously have good specialists in Armenia. We have lots to do, we must work seriously, work good, involve the best. First of all we must work in the direction of education. Dassault, Thales, Leonardo – upon coming to Armenia – must be confident that there are high-quality specialists. ATOM implies this”.

In this context, the president added: “By centralizing in Yerevan, we are depriving the youth the possibility of good work, we are depriving children from receiving high-quality education, we are depriving a talented future scientist or artist who lives in Gyumri, Vanadzor, Sisian or Syunik, Artsakh from self-expression”.

Urging to recognize the homeland which is also outside of Yerevan, the president talked about Gyumri, noting that the to revive the city doesn’t mean to solely build buildings for housing. “We must return the life, and this requires us to start visiting, discovering, finding, supporting, interest,” he said.

“I was in Gyumri on Independence Day. I am very happy that at the decision of the government we celebrated Independence Day this year outside Yerevan. The locals were happy, they said the city has had three times more visitors in 6 months than overall during the past year. This means we are on the right track. If after this we think about Vanadzor, Kapan or Artsakh…This all is a continuous work.

A big group of Italian construction contractors visited Gyumri after my previous visit, then we sent representatives. The project is the following – to bring major Italian contractors who have huge experience in restoring old buildings and find funding mechanisms for restoring many sites in Gyumri. This is first of all a culture of restoring old buildings, something we don’t even have in Yerevan,” he said.

He reminded that UNESCO has sent experts to Gyumri to start a process for the city to become a UNESCO-protected city.

“We must learn to appreciate our values”, the president said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan