Ruben Rubinyan was the head of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly, specializes in this sector, and there is another factor that makes him an effective negotiator — he has ties with the Prime Minister and his team. This is what Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan said in an interview aired on Armenian Public Television, touching upon the question why it was decided to send Rubinyan as Armenia’s special representative to represent Armenia during the upcoming negotiations with Turkey.

Asked if it wouldn’t be right to place emphasis on rich experience in diplomacy and not the political ties of the envoy and the ties with the team, Grigoryan noted the following:

“We believe that the factors I mentioned are more important since any kind of issue can be set forth during the negotiations, and there will be a need to verify a particular issue with the Prime Minister. We took all this into consideration, and we considered Mr. Rubinyan’s appointment more effective. Modern diplomacy is undergoing several changes, and we shouldn’t think about the modern processes with old patterns,” he stated.

A few days ago, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu declared that Armenia and Turkey will appoint special envoys to discuss the steps aimed at normalizing their relations. Turkey will be represented by Serdar Kilic, who served as Turkey’s Ambassador to the United States for 7 years and served as Secretary General of the National Security Council of Turkey before that. Armenia’s special envoy will be Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ruben Rubinyan, who held the position of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for a few months after shift of power and then chaired the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations in the seventh convocation of the National Assembly. In 2017, Rubinyan was in Turkey for a few months and, as he declared from the podium in parliament on August 3, conducted research.