RA MINISTER OF DEFENSE DOES NOT CONSIDER RESUMPTION OF HOSTILITIES IN
KARABAKH IN NEAR FUTURE AS REAL, YET HE REMAINS VIGILANT

YEREVAN, Aygust 12 (Noyan Tapan). RA Minister of Defense Serge
Sargsian does not consider the resumption of hostilities in Karabakh
in the visible future as real. Yet, according to him, “in general,
nothing can be excluded: the Defense Minister must have deep on his
mind constantly that hostilities may resume tomorrow, the day after
tomorrow, in a week, in a month,” reported the Minister during a
meeting with journalists after the command-staff trainings of the NKR
Defense Army. He expressed confidence that the Armenian Armed Forces,
in partucular, the Defense Army will certainly be fighting-efficient
and will handle these powerful arms better than those who would make
an attempt to disturb the peace of the Armenian people. “Today both
our possible adversary and we are acquiring new types of weapon and
continuing military training. Those who in this race will be able to
handle weapon entrusted to them more efficiently, will eventually say
that have completed their task honorably,” added the RA Minister.

According to S. Sargsian, the leaderships of Nagorno Karabakh and
Armenia stated repeatedly that the Armenian side is not going to
resume hostilities.” This is definitely so. And now we are entirely of
this opinion,” he stressed. The RA Minister of Defense assured that
the training is conducted for peace keeping. According to him, today
in the region the peace balance is maintained due to the quality of
military training rather than the number of arms. “Today we made sure
that at least those sub-units that paticipated in the training have a
more serious level of preparation,” said the Minister.