Armenian News-NEWS.am presents below the text of Armenpress' interview Wednesday with National Assembly (NA) Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan—and on celebrating the 30th anniversary of Armenia’s independence, and the vision for opening an era of peace.

Armenpress: Mr. Rubinyan, the matter of celebrating-not celebrating of Independence Day [anniversary] after the [Artsakh] war [last fall] was being discussed a lot in the recent period. How would you assess event that was held yesterday?

Rubinyan: I believe it was the right decision to mark the 30th anniversary of Independence this way because, after all, all our sufferings of not only these 30 years, but also of several preceding centuries were for independence. I find that such discussions shouldn’t had taken place at all. We shouldn’t allow for any suffering, any loss to weaken our resoluteness to build a free and independent homeland. For hundreds of years, our ancestors struggled so that today we will be able to have and mark this day, and I believe yesterday’s event was humble, tasteful, and appropriate.

Armenpress: There is a lot of talk now about opening an era of peace, but we constantly see incidents which question as to what extent this is possible; for example the latest incident which took place with two residents of Kasakh [village] near Vorotan [village].

Rubinyan: Indeed, sadly, during this period we’ve witnessed numerous destructive statements and actions which compel to think that opening an era of peaceful development is unrealistic. But I believe we need to have strong nerves and patiently advance our agenda based on our state interest. In this context, perhaps we should try to give significance also to small positive steps. The incident you mentioned, for example. It is a negative fact that the representatives of the Azerbaijani armed forces or law enforcement agencies detained our citizens who had gotten lost. But it was positive that Azerbaijan returned them practically after one and a half day. Moreover, they [i.e., the repatriated citizens] themselves testified that they weren’t ill-treated in any way while being in Azerbaijan. We hope that with such continued steps an opportunity will be created to move forward with the agenda of peace.