I wish to welcome you all here today. I want to thank the organizers for acknowledging the need to offer our young managers from the private and the public sectors, with the exposure necessary to provide better governance within our countries. I want to encourage the participants, too, to make the best possible use of their opportunity to have learned from the experiences of the United Kingdom, to make it possible for our countries to get a jump start in our democratic evolution.

I especially welcome Lord McCloskey and wish him well in continuing and expanding this very important program. My presence here today is evidence that we, in Armenia, are convinced that democracy is not simply a domestic concern, but also very important for a country's ability to work with the international community and achieve mutually beneficial agendas.

Since independence, Armenia's leadership has abided by its commitment to European values and democratic principles. Given the crises facing this country from the first days of independence Հ conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh, the vestiges of a destructive earthquake, a failed economy with no access to markets and no natural resources Հ Armenia and Armenians may have made greater economic leaps if we had adopted some other governmental system. After all, Frances Fukuyama's thesis is not necessarily correct. If we look around us, especially in the former Soviet Union, we see that there are indeed plenty of other ways of governing. 

But we believed then, as we believe now, that in the long run, inclusive government, a government of laws, not of men, a fair and effective economy, an educated and engaged public, a peaceful international presence are the fruits of good, principled, democratic government. And so we chose this path.

But if the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, believed that a country is carried comfortably down the river by the current, and the function of government is merely to put out an oar when there is any danger of its drifting into the bank, he wasnղt thinking of Armenia or any of the former Soviet states. 

In these dozen years, here in this post-Soviet space, we have struggled to simultaneously govern, while trying to educate and engage a public which believed that there is only one kind of government: a bad one. We have attempted to do that which governments are expected to do: provide for the people's collective needs, to do for them that which they can not individually do for themselves, yet we have done this in the absence of reliable or sufficient resources, with a world watching our every step, and with a population often doubtful of our motives and our capabilities.

This is not surprising, given that our experiences with government were limited to the kind that never worried about the ebb and flow of public opinion, that put guns before butter, that did not allow individuals to do for themselves. On the other hand, we have the demonstrably true assessment of Thomas Jefferson: that government is strongest, of which every man feels himself a part. 

Despite this dilemma, which will only find its resolution in our government's own consistent efforts to demonstrate its commitment to caring for all aspects of human life, we have, in Armenia and Karabakh, succeeded in holding nearly a dozen elections at various levels, with nearly 1000 candidates participating in all. In 1998, in Armenia, we had the first peaceful transfer of power in the former Soviet Union from an elected president to a newly-elected president.

Today, as members of the Council of Europe, we continue to amend our legislation and our regulatory framework to enable us to stand equally alongside our European colleagues, proud of our accomplishments and our prospects. With a final repeal of the law on capital punishment later this spring, we will have completed the legislative obligations we assumed upon membership. At the same time, we continue to pursue our cooperation dialog with the European Union, not because we see eventual membership as an end in itself, but because we welcome the opportunity to travel that path and, in the process, to develop the institutions and processes which will become our own democratic traditions. We wish to become the beneficiaries of the membership process.

In today's world, our challenge is a dual one. Together with developing a working democracy, we are building a market economy. Our recent and long-awaited entry into the World Trade Organization means our steps towards creating a free trade area have been made irreversible, and we are on equal footing in terms of fair trade with other member countries Հ that is, most of the rest of the world.

These are the large road markers which show the rest of the world how far weղve gone on this path traveled by so many before us. However, we wish to go beyond the expected and standard steps. We believe that good governance can receive a jump start if we use the technologies available today to link individuals to government without unnecessary middlemen and cumbersome procedures. Armenia is only the second country in the world to offer e-visas Հ visas electronically to anyone anywhere sitting before a computer Հ and will proceed by putting other consular services online. We hope to continue by offering similar services through other agencies, ministries and departments. We do this in order to facilitate citizensղ interaction with their government easier both here, and for our many citizens abroad.

I welcome the efforts of the John Smith program and wish you luck in enlarging and enhancing this program which benefits us all.