YEREVAN — Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, explained to journalists why there was a need to establish a commission for the revision of the national security strategy. However, he did not provide details on the specific directions in which changes are expected.
“So far, the main discussions have focused on the procedural regulations. The need for a new national security strategy has arisen due to the changes in Armenia’s security environment,” said Grigoryan.
He stated that the work on the new national security strategy can be considered officially launched.
“We will soon begin working meetings. The entire process will be conducted transparently,” Grigoryan added.
He also addressed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s proposal for a new Constitution, emphasizing that discussions about constitutional amendments had already started back in 2020.
“Constitutional changes in Armenia have always been an internal process and have no connection to any external developments. It has been and will remain a domestic process,” he stated.
2020 Truce Agreement Dead
Grigoryan, dismissed on Thursday calls by some opposition figures for Yerevan to try to revive the Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Paragraph 9 of the ceasefire agreement that commits Yerevan to opening transport links between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan through Armenia’s strategic Syunik province. Baku has repeatedly accused Yerevan of not complying with it.
“Armenia was a party to the November 9 [ 2020 agreement] and we saw what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Grigoryan said.
“The November 9 [agreement] also has at least eight other articles and we saw what happened to those eight articles,” he said, clearly alluding Azerbaijan’s September 2023 assault on Karabakh. “How can anyone, whether they are a politician or not, fail to accept the reality of what happened to those eight articles and say that we must return to it for the sake of a single article? We can return and repeat the same path.”
“The de facto reality is that none of the other articles of the November 9 statement exists now,” added the pro-Western official.
Grigorian declined to say why Yerevan has not withdrawn its signature from the truce accord. “That is a matter for another discussion,” he said.
