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Candidate for the president of the
Republic of Armenia
ROBERT KOCHARIAN
ELECTION CAMPAIGN PROGRAM
Economy
The main objectives in the sector for the near future are to:
- Maintain high levels of gross domestic product growth (8-12 percent average annual growth)
- Ensure financial stability, make fiscal policy more effective
- Insure people's bank deposits: from now on, everyone can safely keep his or her modest earnings in a bank
- Encourage the development of favorable economic environment, investments and domestic savings
- Maintain high levels of export growth
- Continue to encourage job creation
- Promote the development of priority sectors that make full use of modern technologies
- Support small and medium enterprises. Middle class is the most important factor for stabilizing the society
- Boost the development of the services sector
- Support the development of tourism infrastructure
- Protect the domestic market and consumer interests
- Effectively combat the abuses of economic monopoly.
Industry
- Support the operation of those companies (regardless of the form of their ownership) that provide economic equilibrium and significant development of internal and foreign cooperation
- Support foreign investments while implementing industrial programs
- Promote improved quality of domestic products and services
- Encourage the replacement of imported goods with high quality domestic products
- Promote a higher share of secondary industries in the gross domestic product
- Make the privatization process more productive; support the implementation of effective programs in the post-privatization phase
- Implement programmed privatization of a number of enterprises of significant economic importance.
Agriculture
- Farmers must have access to irrigation water
- Assist the farmers in acquiring high quality seeds, pesticides and fertilizers
- Support the development of agricultural product processing
- Use direct state budget allocations to farmers in order to mitigate the consequences of natural disasters
- The state must become a reliable partner and supporter of farmers.
Infrastructure
- Continue the renovation of highways, construction of roads, renovation of inter-marz and local roads (new roads bypassing Yerevan, Yerevan-Armavir-Gyumri-Spitak-Vanadzor-Dilijan-Sevan-Gavar-Martuni-Yeghegnadzor, Aparan-Aragats-Artik, Gyumri-Amasia, Ijevan-Berd-Tchambarak-Shorzha, Vanadzor-Stepanavan-Tashir, etc.). The Armenian road network must be the most developed in the region
- Make Zvartnots airport comply with international standards of service with the help of significant foreign investments
- Improve the safety of the energy sector and promote financial rehabilitation
- Ensure access to modern communication means and high quality of services
- Enhance the natural gas supply to cities and villages, develop and implement a five-year plan for gasification of the country. Increase the levels of gas supply to the Soviet-time levels
- Rehabilitate and develop irrigation systems (including gravity irrigation)
- Ensure maximum citizen participation in water management
- 24-hour drinking water supply must become a norm.
Fiscal and Budgetary Policy
The priorities are:
- Strengthen the lawfulness and legal protection of taxpayers
- Ensure that paying taxes becomes a lifestyle
- Increase the efficiency of budget expenditures
- Effective measures against the shadow economy and disclosure of hidden revenues are some of the essential means for addressing the people's social needs
- Implement a system of income declaration by all citizens by 2005
- Tax and customs laws must not change frequently.
Urban Development
- Implement urban development programs for towns and villages
- Pay particular attention to comprehensive development of Yerevan and other major cities around the country. Let us turn Yerevan - the capital of all Armenians into a city that complies with modern standards
- Strengthen and improve the lawfulness in urban development, prevent illegal construction
- Simplify the procedures and administrative regulations in the sector. One should be able to built his or her house without hassle
- Address the housing needs of families who have lost their homes to disasters (the Noyemberian earthquake, landslides, bombed towns)
- Provide housing to those families who lost their homes in 1987-1992 as a result of reclaiming the land for government or public use
- Introduce local heating systems.
Environment
Issues of particular importance are:
- Preservation of Lake Sevan and restoration of ecological balance; operation of the Vorotan hydro-power plant. In the next five years, the water level in Lake Sevan will increase by at least 60 cm
- Preservation of forests, implementation of forest use and rehabilitation programs. In the next five years, at least 15 hectares of forest will be rehabilitated
- Enhance the efficient use and monitoring of mines/mineral resources.
Social Sector
The priority areas of state regulation are: ensuring social justice and protection, reducing the social polarization, providing jobs to the people, creating an atmosphere of public accord. One must have confidence towards his or her immediate future, rather than living in the past or in the distant future.
The main issues in the sector are:
- Strengthen the state budget's social orientation
- Implement comprehensive programs to reduce unemployment: an average of 30-40 thousand new jobs will be created each year
- Regulate the trilateral relations between the state, employers and employees. A working person's income must be sufficient to guarantee him or her a dignified life.
- Introduce a new pensions system
- Essentially tie the size of a person's pension to his or her wages. Ensure that pensions are raised every year
- Implement targeted programs for the most needy, as well as for families with many children and young families
- Improve the family benefits system
- Prevent cases of children being left out of the educational system for social reasons
- Implement measures aimed at rehabilitation of the disabled and their integration into the society
- Solve the social problems of war veterans and freedom fighters by means of program approaches
- Pay particular attention to improving the social condition of the elderly
- Assist in addressing the problems of women and children
- Implement government programs promoting higher birth rates and encouraging natural reproduction
- Complete the integration of refugees into the society and fully meet their housing needs by means of a comprehensive program
- Take consistent measures to reduce emigration and support the return of emigrants on the government level.
Health
One of the state's most important priorities is to ensure the public health. In the next few years, it is necessary to do the following:
- Implement measures to promote healthy lifestyle and prevent diseases
- Strengthen the primary health sector
- Introduce the family medicine system
- Provide ambulatory services in rural areas
- Make healthcare services, guaranteed by the government, available to the most needy
- Ensure high quality of healthcare services
- Increase the efficiency of the use of budget resources in the sector. Implement the "money is for the patient" principle
- Ensure steady financing for those healthcare services that are guaranteed by the government
- Support the establishment of modern regional healthcare centers
- Introduce a mandatory health insurance system.
The public's health is our greatest wealth.
Education and Science
Development of Armenia's main treasure - the human intellectual potential - is one of our priority goals. The most reliable guarantee in addressing the challenges facing the Armenian people in the 21st century is a well-educated and knowledgeable public. Our teachers, professors and scientists are worthy of utmost praise.
Our primary goals are:
School and Professional Education
- Increase the level of schools' autonomy
- Enhance the teachers' authority through material and moral encouragement
- Increase the teachers' salaries annually
- Provide high-quality teachers to schools in remote areas
- Improve the building and equipment conditions in every city and village school
- Ensure that every school is equipped with computers; every student must know how to use a computer
- Create a common internet based educational network
- Strengthen the principles of university self-governance and internal democracy
- Introduce international standards in education
- Introduce modern educational programs and technologies
- Create a standardized testing system that would ensure the impartiality of examinations.
Science
- Improve the system's management, ensure the effectiveness of targeted, basic and thematic financing in the sector
- Promote a higher level of participation in international scientific programs
- Identify the priorities for science projects commissioned by the state
- Support the application of scientific research results
- Ensure accessibility of scientific-technical information
- Promote the involvement of sources of financing outside the state budget
- Strengthen the ties between science, education and the economy.
Armenia must become a regional center for education, science and intellectual services.
Earthquake Zone
- Complete the construction of all housing, educational and healthcare facilities envisaged by the government program by 2003
- Direct all government and other resources to the development of production, services sector and industrial infrastructures, as well as job creation.
- Improve the quality of public utilities (24-hour water supply, introduction of local heating systems, etc.)
- Support the reconstruction of cultural and sporting facilities.
Let us turn the earthquake zone into a development zone.
Culture
Culture is an illustration of a nation's spiritual creations, identity and morality. It is the contribution by the people in culture that makes us and our country original and unique.
The policy objectives in the area of culture are to:
- Support the expression of an individual's and the public's creative potential and the preservation of our historical/cultural heritage
- Complete the reconstruction and renovation of about 40 cultural venues by 2003 (museums, theaters, cultural facilities, galleries, historical/cultural monuments and complexes, etc.)
- Promote harmonious development of modern, folk and applied arts
- Encourage the authors of significant cultural achievements
- Pay particular attention to the harmonious development of social/cultural expressions by national minorities
- Enhance the cultural cooperation with other countries and the Diaspora
- Present the Armenian culture abroad in an appropriate fashion.
Youth Affairs
A new modern generation, raised in the conditions of independent statehood, has emerged in Armenia. It is the duty of our young state to stand by our new generation everywhere.
It is necessary to:
- Make the young generation fully involved in our political, economic and public life, support the full use of their creative potential
- Take coordinated steps towards strengthening the patriotism, state thinking and moral values
- Promote the harmonious spiritual/cultural and physical development of the young generation
- Promote the development of sports and encourage athletes who have made significant achievements
- Promote the professional training for the young generation and increase the levels of their employment
- Support the implementation of scientific and creative projects by talented and gifted young people.
State Government and Local Self-Governance
The improvement of the governance system is one of the most important conditions for the effective operation of government agencies.
State Government
- Enhance the structural reforms in the sector
- Clarify and separate the functions and responsibilities of various government agencies
- Complete the civil service reforms
- Ensure the openness of activities by various government agencies
- Introduce a system of accountability by government agencies and officials
- Create effective anti-corruption mechanisms, reduce bureaucratic hassle and abuses by increasing the level of responsibility of government officials
- Implement comprehensive programs for public oversight of government agencies
Local Self-Governance
- Expand the authority of local self-government bodies
- Promote the expansion of sources of revenues for local budgets
- Ensure the openness of activities by community and local leaders
- Support the development of condominiums and other forms of community organization
- Implement comprehensive government programs for the development of border, mountainous and alpine communities.
Rule of Law
In order to strengthen the foundations of the rule-of-law state, it is necessary to:
- Complete the process of constitutional reforms and lay real foundations for ensuring the supremacy of law and establishing the rule of law
- Ensure a significant increase in the level of justice as a result of judicial reforms
- Continue the reforms in the prosecutorial, national security and police structures
- Organize effective lawful propaganda
- Ensure the availability of legal defense and legal services
- Regulate by laws the scope and limits of government interference with the economy
- Implement mechanisms for preventing the abuse by government officials and prosecuting such abuses.
Everyone is equal before the law.
Democracy
The priorities for the establishment of a sovereign state and a free and democratic system are:
- Legal and practical protection of human rights and liberties
- Organization of free, fair and transparent elections at all levels
- Strengthening a new political culture, supporting the free operation of political parties and public organizations, creating an atmosphere of political accord and social partnership
- Increasing the level of citizen participation in the decision-making process
- Enhancing the participation of the young people, members of the intelligentsia and women in the policy-making process
- Decentralization of government, strengthening the public oversight of government agencies
- Further strengthening of the foundations of liberal economy and ownership rights.
The Army
Acknowledging the establishment of the Army as an already achieved historical reality and recognizing its undeniable role in laying the foundations of the state, it is necessary to reiterate the timely importance of the following objectives:
- Strengthen the Army's combat preparedness and its patriotic spirit
- Continue the development of highly-qualified modern officers
- Always make sure that the Army is well-armed, the military units have the necessary material-technical equipment and the social conditions of military personnel are adequate
- Continue the relentless struggle against the still existing breaches of the law and crime in the Army. Military discipline is mandatory for everyone.
Artsakh (Karabakh)
Resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh problem continues to remain an all-national issues; all the Armenian people - in Armenia, in Artsakh and in the Diaspora - must come together on this issue.
- While remaining committed to a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, we aim to achieve international recognition of the Karabakhi people's politically, legally and historically justified right to self-determination, while ensuring safe conditions for their existence and constant geographic ties with the Motherland.
- Provide comprehensive support for economic development of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.
Foreign Policy
The goal of the Armenian foreign policy is to establish steady guarantees for our country's and our people's security and economic prosperity, to promote stability and lasting peace in the region.
The Armenian foreign policy will be aimed mainly at:
- Establishment of steady guarantees for the country's and the people's security
- Creation of conditions necessary for cooperation and normalization of relations with our neighbors, and promotion of regional cooperation
- Further deepening of integration with Europe
- Establishment of foreign economic ties
- Enhancing and expanding the international involvement, particularly in international organizations (UN, Council of Europe, etc.), and increasing Armenia's active participation
- International recognition of the Armenian Genocide
- Deepening of strategic partnership and economic cooperation with the Russian Federation
- Deepening of relations with the USA and countries-members of the European Union
- Ensuring productive cooperation with Armenia's immediate neighbors - Iran and Georgia.
Armenia will build its relations in the international arena on the basis of the principles of partnership and complementarity.
The Diaspora
The results of the two Armenia-Diaspora conferences have already laid strong foundations for the expansion of the Armenia-Diaspora ties.
Constitutional reforms are expected to regulate the issue of dual citizenship.
Today, some areas of cooperation have already been clearly outlined. They are:
- Organization of pan-Armenian events (conferences, assemblies, seminars, sporting events, festivals, business conferences, competitions, etc.)
- Implementation of joint investment programs, assistance to the export of Armenian products, organization of various international and regional conferences, assemblies and trade exhibitions abroad.
- Organization of joint events with the Diaspora through the Pan-Armenian International Youth Foundation
- Training for Diaspora-Armenian teachers
- Coordination of research in the Armenian studies conducted in the Diaspora and in Armenia
- Development of textbooks and other educational materials for various schools in the Diaspora
- Development of a pan-Armenian information network
- Involvement of the Diaspora's potential in addressing various pan-Armenian issues.
The unity of the Armenian people is our strongest weapon.
Taken from www.robertkocharian.am
Republic of Armenia
ROBERT KOCHARIAN
ELECTION CAMPAIGN PROGRAM
Economy
The main objectives in the sector for the near future are to:
- Maintain high levels of gross domestic product growth (8-12 percent average annual growth)
- Ensure financial stability, make fiscal policy more effective
- Insure people's bank deposits: from now on, everyone can safely keep his or her modest earnings in a bank
- Encourage the development of favorable economic environment, investments and domestic savings
- Maintain high levels of export growth
- Continue to encourage job creation
- Promote the development of priority sectors that make full use of modern technologies
- Support small and medium enterprises. Middle class is the most important factor for stabilizing the society
- Boost the development of the services sector
- Support the development of tourism infrastructure
- Protect the domestic market and consumer interests
- Effectively combat the abuses of economic monopoly.
Industry
- Support the operation of those companies (regardless of the form of their ownership) that provide economic equilibrium and significant development of internal and foreign cooperation
- Support foreign investments while implementing industrial programs
- Promote improved quality of domestic products and services
- Encourage the replacement of imported goods with high quality domestic products
- Promote a higher share of secondary industries in the gross domestic product
- Make the privatization process more productive; support the implementation of effective programs in the post-privatization phase
- Implement programmed privatization of a number of enterprises of significant economic importance.
Agriculture
- Farmers must have access to irrigation water
- Assist the farmers in acquiring high quality seeds, pesticides and fertilizers
- Support the development of agricultural product processing
- Use direct state budget allocations to farmers in order to mitigate the consequences of natural disasters
- The state must become a reliable partner and supporter of farmers.
Infrastructure
- Continue the renovation of highways, construction of roads, renovation of inter-marz and local roads (new roads bypassing Yerevan, Yerevan-Armavir-Gyumri-Spitak-Vanadzor-Dilijan-Sevan-Gavar-Martuni-Yeghegnadzor, Aparan-Aragats-Artik, Gyumri-Amasia, Ijevan-Berd-Tchambarak-Shorzha, Vanadzor-Stepanavan-Tashir, etc.). The Armenian road network must be the most developed in the region
- Make Zvartnots airport comply with international standards of service with the help of significant foreign investments
- Improve the safety of the energy sector and promote financial rehabilitation
- Ensure access to modern communication means and high quality of services
- Enhance the natural gas supply to cities and villages, develop and implement a five-year plan for gasification of the country. Increase the levels of gas supply to the Soviet-time levels
- Rehabilitate and develop irrigation systems (including gravity irrigation)
- Ensure maximum citizen participation in water management
- 24-hour drinking water supply must become a norm.
Fiscal and Budgetary Policy
The priorities are:
- Strengthen the lawfulness and legal protection of taxpayers
- Ensure that paying taxes becomes a lifestyle
- Increase the efficiency of budget expenditures
- Effective measures against the shadow economy and disclosure of hidden revenues are some of the essential means for addressing the people's social needs
- Implement a system of income declaration by all citizens by 2005
- Tax and customs laws must not change frequently.
Urban Development
- Implement urban development programs for towns and villages
- Pay particular attention to comprehensive development of Yerevan and other major cities around the country. Let us turn Yerevan - the capital of all Armenians into a city that complies with modern standards
- Strengthen and improve the lawfulness in urban development, prevent illegal construction
- Simplify the procedures and administrative regulations in the sector. One should be able to built his or her house without hassle
- Address the housing needs of families who have lost their homes to disasters (the Noyemberian earthquake, landslides, bombed towns)
- Provide housing to those families who lost their homes in 1987-1992 as a result of reclaiming the land for government or public use
- Introduce local heating systems.
Environment
Issues of particular importance are:
- Preservation of Lake Sevan and restoration of ecological balance; operation of the Vorotan hydro-power plant. In the next five years, the water level in Lake Sevan will increase by at least 60 cm
- Preservation of forests, implementation of forest use and rehabilitation programs. In the next five years, at least 15 hectares of forest will be rehabilitated
- Enhance the efficient use and monitoring of mines/mineral resources.
Social Sector
The priority areas of state regulation are: ensuring social justice and protection, reducing the social polarization, providing jobs to the people, creating an atmosphere of public accord. One must have confidence towards his or her immediate future, rather than living in the past or in the distant future.
The main issues in the sector are:
- Strengthen the state budget's social orientation
- Implement comprehensive programs to reduce unemployment: an average of 30-40 thousand new jobs will be created each year
- Regulate the trilateral relations between the state, employers and employees. A working person's income must be sufficient to guarantee him or her a dignified life.
- Introduce a new pensions system
- Essentially tie the size of a person's pension to his or her wages. Ensure that pensions are raised every year
- Implement targeted programs for the most needy, as well as for families with many children and young families
- Improve the family benefits system
- Prevent cases of children being left out of the educational system for social reasons
- Implement measures aimed at rehabilitation of the disabled and their integration into the society
- Solve the social problems of war veterans and freedom fighters by means of program approaches
- Pay particular attention to improving the social condition of the elderly
- Assist in addressing the problems of women and children
- Implement government programs promoting higher birth rates and encouraging natural reproduction
- Complete the integration of refugees into the society and fully meet their housing needs by means of a comprehensive program
- Take consistent measures to reduce emigration and support the return of emigrants on the government level.
Health
One of the state's most important priorities is to ensure the public health. In the next few years, it is necessary to do the following:
- Implement measures to promote healthy lifestyle and prevent diseases
- Strengthen the primary health sector
- Introduce the family medicine system
- Provide ambulatory services in rural areas
- Make healthcare services, guaranteed by the government, available to the most needy
- Ensure high quality of healthcare services
- Increase the efficiency of the use of budget resources in the sector. Implement the "money is for the patient" principle
- Ensure steady financing for those healthcare services that are guaranteed by the government
- Support the establishment of modern regional healthcare centers
- Introduce a mandatory health insurance system.
The public's health is our greatest wealth.
Education and Science
Development of Armenia's main treasure - the human intellectual potential - is one of our priority goals. The most reliable guarantee in addressing the challenges facing the Armenian people in the 21st century is a well-educated and knowledgeable public. Our teachers, professors and scientists are worthy of utmost praise.
Our primary goals are:
School and Professional Education
- Increase the level of schools' autonomy
- Enhance the teachers' authority through material and moral encouragement
- Increase the teachers' salaries annually
- Provide high-quality teachers to schools in remote areas
- Improve the building and equipment conditions in every city and village school
- Ensure that every school is equipped with computers; every student must know how to use a computer
- Create a common internet based educational network
- Strengthen the principles of university self-governance and internal democracy
- Introduce international standards in education
- Introduce modern educational programs and technologies
- Create a standardized testing system that would ensure the impartiality of examinations.
Science
- Improve the system's management, ensure the effectiveness of targeted, basic and thematic financing in the sector
- Promote a higher level of participation in international scientific programs
- Identify the priorities for science projects commissioned by the state
- Support the application of scientific research results
- Ensure accessibility of scientific-technical information
- Promote the involvement of sources of financing outside the state budget
- Strengthen the ties between science, education and the economy.
Armenia must become a regional center for education, science and intellectual services.
Earthquake Zone
- Complete the construction of all housing, educational and healthcare facilities envisaged by the government program by 2003
- Direct all government and other resources to the development of production, services sector and industrial infrastructures, as well as job creation.
- Improve the quality of public utilities (24-hour water supply, introduction of local heating systems, etc.)
- Support the reconstruction of cultural and sporting facilities.
Let us turn the earthquake zone into a development zone.
Culture
Culture is an illustration of a nation's spiritual creations, identity and morality. It is the contribution by the people in culture that makes us and our country original and unique.
The policy objectives in the area of culture are to:
- Support the expression of an individual's and the public's creative potential and the preservation of our historical/cultural heritage
- Complete the reconstruction and renovation of about 40 cultural venues by 2003 (museums, theaters, cultural facilities, galleries, historical/cultural monuments and complexes, etc.)
- Promote harmonious development of modern, folk and applied arts
- Encourage the authors of significant cultural achievements
- Pay particular attention to the harmonious development of social/cultural expressions by national minorities
- Enhance the cultural cooperation with other countries and the Diaspora
- Present the Armenian culture abroad in an appropriate fashion.
Youth Affairs
A new modern generation, raised in the conditions of independent statehood, has emerged in Armenia. It is the duty of our young state to stand by our new generation everywhere.
It is necessary to:
- Make the young generation fully involved in our political, economic and public life, support the full use of their creative potential
- Take coordinated steps towards strengthening the patriotism, state thinking and moral values
- Promote the harmonious spiritual/cultural and physical development of the young generation
- Promote the development of sports and encourage athletes who have made significant achievements
- Promote the professional training for the young generation and increase the levels of their employment
- Support the implementation of scientific and creative projects by talented and gifted young people.
State Government and Local Self-Governance
The improvement of the governance system is one of the most important conditions for the effective operation of government agencies.
State Government
- Enhance the structural reforms in the sector
- Clarify and separate the functions and responsibilities of various government agencies
- Complete the civil service reforms
- Ensure the openness of activities by various government agencies
- Introduce a system of accountability by government agencies and officials
- Create effective anti-corruption mechanisms, reduce bureaucratic hassle and abuses by increasing the level of responsibility of government officials
- Implement comprehensive programs for public oversight of government agencies
Local Self-Governance
- Expand the authority of local self-government bodies
- Promote the expansion of sources of revenues for local budgets
- Ensure the openness of activities by community and local leaders
- Support the development of condominiums and other forms of community organization
- Implement comprehensive government programs for the development of border, mountainous and alpine communities.
Rule of Law
In order to strengthen the foundations of the rule-of-law state, it is necessary to:
- Complete the process of constitutional reforms and lay real foundations for ensuring the supremacy of law and establishing the rule of law
- Ensure a significant increase in the level of justice as a result of judicial reforms
- Continue the reforms in the prosecutorial, national security and police structures
- Organize effective lawful propaganda
- Ensure the availability of legal defense and legal services
- Regulate by laws the scope and limits of government interference with the economy
- Implement mechanisms for preventing the abuse by government officials and prosecuting such abuses.
Everyone is equal before the law.
Democracy
The priorities for the establishment of a sovereign state and a free and democratic system are:
- Legal and practical protection of human rights and liberties
- Organization of free, fair and transparent elections at all levels
- Strengthening a new political culture, supporting the free operation of political parties and public organizations, creating an atmosphere of political accord and social partnership
- Increasing the level of citizen participation in the decision-making process
- Enhancing the participation of the young people, members of the intelligentsia and women in the policy-making process
- Decentralization of government, strengthening the public oversight of government agencies
- Further strengthening of the foundations of liberal economy and ownership rights.
The Army
Acknowledging the establishment of the Army as an already achieved historical reality and recognizing its undeniable role in laying the foundations of the state, it is necessary to reiterate the timely importance of the following objectives:
- Strengthen the Army's combat preparedness and its patriotic spirit
- Continue the development of highly-qualified modern officers
- Always make sure that the Army is well-armed, the military units have the necessary material-technical equipment and the social conditions of military personnel are adequate
- Continue the relentless struggle against the still existing breaches of the law and crime in the Army. Military discipline is mandatory for everyone.
Artsakh (Karabakh)
Resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh problem continues to remain an all-national issues; all the Armenian people - in Armenia, in Artsakh and in the Diaspora - must come together on this issue.
- While remaining committed to a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, we aim to achieve international recognition of the Karabakhi people's politically, legally and historically justified right to self-determination, while ensuring safe conditions for their existence and constant geographic ties with the Motherland.
- Provide comprehensive support for economic development of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.
Foreign Policy
The goal of the Armenian foreign policy is to establish steady guarantees for our country's and our people's security and economic prosperity, to promote stability and lasting peace in the region.
The Armenian foreign policy will be aimed mainly at:
- Establishment of steady guarantees for the country's and the people's security
- Creation of conditions necessary for cooperation and normalization of relations with our neighbors, and promotion of regional cooperation
- Further deepening of integration with Europe
- Establishment of foreign economic ties
- Enhancing and expanding the international involvement, particularly in international organizations (UN, Council of Europe, etc.), and increasing Armenia's active participation
- International recognition of the Armenian Genocide
- Deepening of strategic partnership and economic cooperation with the Russian Federation
- Deepening of relations with the USA and countries-members of the European Union
- Ensuring productive cooperation with Armenia's immediate neighbors - Iran and Georgia.
Armenia will build its relations in the international arena on the basis of the principles of partnership and complementarity.
The Diaspora
The results of the two Armenia-Diaspora conferences have already laid strong foundations for the expansion of the Armenia-Diaspora ties.
Constitutional reforms are expected to regulate the issue of dual citizenship.
Today, some areas of cooperation have already been clearly outlined. They are:
- Organization of pan-Armenian events (conferences, assemblies, seminars, sporting events, festivals, business conferences, competitions, etc.)
- Implementation of joint investment programs, assistance to the export of Armenian products, organization of various international and regional conferences, assemblies and trade exhibitions abroad.
- Organization of joint events with the Diaspora through the Pan-Armenian International Youth Foundation
- Training for Diaspora-Armenian teachers
- Coordination of research in the Armenian studies conducted in the Diaspora and in Armenia
- Development of textbooks and other educational materials for various schools in the Diaspora
- Development of a pan-Armenian information network
- Involvement of the Diaspora's potential in addressing various pan-Armenian issues.
The unity of the Armenian people is our strongest weapon.
Taken from www.robertkocharian.am
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