ARMENIAN LEADER SAYS HIS GOAL TO SOOTHE IMPACT OF CRISIS

Public Television of Armenia
April 10 2009

[Presenter] President Serzh Sargsyan, speaking at a news conference
today marking his first anniversary in office, responded to 60
questions in 160 minutes. About 70 local and foreign journalists
were invited to the news conference. For the first time ever,
representatives from [Armenian] regional media outlets were also
invited.

The bulk of the questions were on Armenia’s domestic and foreign
policies, the impact of the financial and economic crises, the Karabakh
issue. Our main goal today is to soothe the impact of the world
economic crisis, Sargsyan said, expressing hope that the government
would succeed in it. He said that the crisis has not diminished the
government’s resolve to implement programmes, but makes it apply
more efforts to implement them. The crisis is not a reason for any
programme to be halted, especially that all the programmes encompass
anti-crisis elements, Sargsyan said. He also said that the crisis will
not affect the construction in the [1988 earthquake] disaster zone,
and 1,000 apartments will be built in Gyumri. He conveyed hope that
next year the Iran-Armenia railroad construction will be implemented;
this year the Iran-Armenia pipeline construction will start that will
allow importing oil and diesel fuel from Iran to Armenia. He also
assured that the construction of the large hydro power plant on the
River Araz will be carried out this year.

[President Serzh Sargsya, addressing the news conference] My most
important goal is to ensure that the impact of this crisis on our
people is not tougher than on others. I’d like to say that – I don’t
know why – the republic’s president and the cabinet are criticized
for allegedly saying that there would be no crisis in Armenia, that
this crisis would save us. Actually, we cannot say something like
that because only someone having mental problems could think so. We
have said and we are reiterated that our goal is to soothe the impact
of the crisis for our people and to create a situation where we take
it no harder than others.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress