Mills: The USA stands proudly next to Armenia as a reliable partner and expects to deepen cooperation in the future
ArmInfo. The USA is proud of standing next to Armenia as a reliable partner and expects to deepen cooperation in the future. On September 1, in Yerevan, during discussions with alumni of the George Marshall Center about the challenges Armenia faces in the sphere of security, US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills stated.
According to him, the Armenia-US partnership was laid 25 years ago and the parties work together to strengthen Armenia's capabilities in all directions. At the same time, the diplomat expressed his conviction that a large number of graduates of the Marshall Center from Armenia testify to the strength of the Armenian-American defense cooperation. "During these years, participating in the projects of the Marshall Center, Armenia not only influenced the approaches that Armenian leaders and those who make security decisions, but also the wider involvement of the RA in security issues in the Euro-Atlantic area. Graduates of the Marshall Center during these years contributed to the partnership and permanent strengthening of friendship, and, having returned home, brought with them new ideas that were applicable in Armenia. They also helped ensure that the processes in Armenia and the South Caucasus become more receptive to Washington and other European capitals," the US ambassador said.
In his turn, German Ambassador to Armenia Matthias Kiesler noted that the participation of the Armenian side in various projects of the Marshall Center plays an important role. He noted that last year the German Defense Ministry decided to increase funding to the Marshall Center in Yerevan, which shows how important the FRG attaches to relations with Armenia. "This also opens up a new opportunity for Armenian graduates of the center who can join the internal network of graduates of the Marshall Center, more than 12,000 of them worldwide," the ambassador concluded.
During the meeting, two panels of discussions were held: the first was devoted to Armenia's foreign policy and defense approaches, where the RA's relations with NATO and the CSTO were discussed, as well as with its neighbors; The second is the challenges facing the South Caucasus in the security field, where corruption issues were raised, as a challenge to national security, as well as terrorism as a global threat.
To note, Armenia participates in the projects of D. Marshall Center since 1995, over these years more than 240 Armenian participants have graduated from this center.
The Marshall Center is a joint American-German educational institution, something like a military-political academy. Since the day of education (1993), over 12,000 high-ranking officers, senior government officials, scientists and parliamentarians from forty-eight countries, including from Armenia, Russia and other post-Soviet republics, have been trained here. Training in the Marshall Center is conducted in three languages - English, German and Russian. Teaching staff - mixed, Germans, French, Romanians, Finns, as well as from Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The lion's share of the annual spending was assumed by the United States - twenty-five out of twenty-seven million dollars. The rest is paid by Germany.