Interfax News Agency, Russia
April 12 2008

NEW GOVT TO IMPLEMENT PRESIDENT SARGSYAN’S ELECTION PROGRAM

The election program of Armenia’s new President Serzh Sargsyan is
ambitious, but needs to be fulfilled, Armenian Prime Minister Tigran
Sargsyan said at a meeting with students in Yerevan on Friday.

Sargsyan said the program, which focuses on the development of
economics, science and education, has serious political content,
without which no economic reforms are possible.

The only way to make the people of Armenia richer is through
knowledge, not impudence and insolence. And you should be demanding
and prevent people who are ignorant and badly raised from running the
country, Sargsyan told the students.

Sargsyan refused to answer the students’ questions on the composition
and structure of the future government of the country.

In the meantime, a diplomatic source in Yerevan told Interfax on
Friday that Armenian Ambassador to France Edward Nalbandyan is one of
the candidates to the post of Armenia’s new foreign minister.

Acting foreign minister Vardan Oskanyan said earlier he is not
planning to be a member of the new government. During his farewell
meeting with Foreign Ministry officials, he said: I intend to work in
the country and help the next foreign minister achieve success on the
international scene.

He also said he intends to take part in the development of a new
political structure, whose work will be aimed at removing barriers
between society and the current political forces in Armenia and
looking for ideas of uniting them. Nalbandyan was born in Armenia in
1959. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign
Relations in 1978 and received a graduate degree from the Oriental
Studies Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1988. He
worked in the Soviet foreign policy system for a long time. In 1999,
he was appointed Armenia’s ambassador to France.

On April 9. Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree
dismissing the government and appointed Tigran Sargsyan the
republic’s prime minister.

Under the Armenian Constitution, the new government is to be formed
within 20 days following the appointment of the prime minister.