MIKHAIL ARUTYUNYAN — NEW ARMENIAN DEFENCE MINISTER
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
April 25, 2007 Wednesday 03:43 AM EST
Chief of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff Colonel-General
Mikhail Arutyunyan was appointed to head the republic’s defence
ministry. President Robert Kocharian signed a corresponding decree on
Wednesday, Itar-Tass was told here at the Presidential Press Service.
Arutyunyan had discharged the functions of head of the defence
establishment as of April 5. The post of defence minister became
vacant when Surge Sarkisian, who held it from 2000, was appointed
prime minister on April 4.
Colonel-General Mikhail Arutyunovich Arutyunyan is sixty-one years
old. He graduated from the Baku Higher General Commanding Officers
School in 1967, from the Frunze Military Academy in 1976, and the
Military Academy of the Soviet Armed Forces General Staff in 1988.
Arutyunyan had served in the Soviet army, where he first commanded
a reconnaissance squad and was later promoted to the post of Deputy
Chief of Staff and Head of the Reconnaissance Department of a Guards
Army in the Transcaucasian Military District. He was senior instructor
at the Reconnaissance Chair of the Military Academy of the General
Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1988 to 1992.
Arutyunyan was enlisted in the Armed Forces of Armenia in May 1992,
where he held the post of Head of the Operations Department and
Deputy Head of the Chief Staff of the Armed Forces, and was later
promoted to the post of First Deputy Head of the Chief Staff of the
Armed Forces. He was head of the Chief Staff of the Armed Forces and
First Deputy Defence Minister beginning from September 1994.