KARABAKH MINISTER COMMENTS ON MILITARY EXERCISE – ARMENIAN PAPER

Ayots Ashkar, Yerevan
19 Apr 06

Text of Vaan Vardanyan’s report in Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkar
on 19 April headlined “The situation is calm”.

The NKR [Nagornyy Karabakh republic] defence minister, Seyran Oganyan,
gave a news conference in Stepanakert yesterday 18 April].

“A command-and-staff exercise has been held involving troops
[on 14 April]. As was the case last year, this year as well we
drew serious attention to the readiness of the senior staff of the
army. Exercises are being conducted for this reason,” Seyran Oganyan
said. He emphasized that measures were being taken to improve the
moral and psychological atmosphere and increase discipline in military
units. “I am happy and proud that the army could resolve its battle
efficiency problems and that we can ensure 100-per-cent call-up with
the participation of relevant structures and departments and all
the unions of liberating soldiers. Soldiers who fought yesterday are
ready to defend borders today as well. It takes us just over seven
hours to mobilize the reserve,” Oganyan added.

Commenting on a sharp increase in Azerbaijan’s military budget,
Oganyan said: “We always take relevant preventive measures. Increasing
the budget is one thing, using the funds correctly is quite another
thing. Our people have always been able to resolve this kind of
problem thanks to them being organized and to economic success.”

Oganyan said the situation on the border was calm. Skirmishes
often happen on the contact line but the Armenian side does not
always respond to them, he added. “The Azerbaijani side did not
attempt to advance positions this year. This process was observed
in 2003-2004. They have improved their positions on their territory,
and in some sectors they have moved close to our positions, but this
has not affected our structure.”

At the same time, Oganyan said that the Azerbaijani party had advances
their positions mainly in lowland sectors of the contact line with
the Karabakh forces. The Armenian party prevented attempts to do so
in the mountain sectors of the border.

“Today the NKR borders lie where a soldier sits in a trench. From
that place we add engineering facilities with relevant deepness and
thickness in order to provide our soldiers with trenches for tomorrow’s
battle,” Oganyan said. Since 2000 the Armenian party has been carrying
out this process in a more intensive and planned manner, he added.

The defence minister preferred not to touch on political problems
saying that he was a serviceman and did not deal with politics. He
only said that he assessed as satisfactory the Karabakh conflict
settlement within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group as the
mediators did their best. But Oganyan said Karabakh’s participation
in the settlement process was important and logical. At the moment
there is no need to deploy peacekeeping forces in the region, he said.