In Berlin, President Serzh Sargsyan’s meeting with Angela Merkel has drawn to a close.  At a joint press conference after the meeting, Angela Merkel spoke about Armenia-Turkey relations and said, “Unfortunately, the process of establishing bilateral relations has been postponed or suspended, but this issue will surely be overcome when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved.” Unfortunately, the media has taken little notice of this statement by Merkel.  Never before had a foreign state, besides Turkey and Azerbaijan, publicly linked the improvement of Armenia-Turkey relations with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict until these words by Merkel or, rather, by the German government. This suggests that Merkel has also spoken along these lines with Serzh Sargsyan, although we do not know what she said.  However, whatever it was, Sargsyan could have corrected her then and there, unless he was in agreement with her opinion. The second issue regards the opening of foreign language schools in Armenia.  Serzh Sargsyan has said that this is about opening only a few private schools in Armenia. “The best way would be for us to improve the level of all our schools in a short period of time, so that our children can gain a modern and competitive education.  But at the same time, why should we rule out the opening of a few private schools with international standards of education?” said Serzh Sargsyan during a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community in Berlin, in reply to a question asked by one of the people present. According to Serzh Sargsyan, these schools will be very few in number and subjects such as Armenian history, the history of religion and so on will be mandatory for the citizens of Armenia studying there. “But if these schools also have citizens of Russia, Germany or France as students, can we make them study, say, Physics or Chemistry in Armenian?  Is that possible? Yerevan has an American University with teaches subjects in English, a Russian-Armenian University which is Russian-medium and Armenia has not been harmed in the process.  Again, let me say that this is about a few schools which will not receive a single Dram from the state budget,” said Serzh Sargsyan. First, Serzh Sargsyan speaks of schools with “international standards” meaning that these are schools where students receive an “education up to international standards” irrespective of their nationality.  He then speaks of “improving the level” of the remaining schools so that our children receive a competitive education.  The question is – what is an education with “international standards” and how does it differ from Armenian schools with “improved levels offering a modern and competitive education”? Don’t we mean “international standards” when we say “modern”? Regarding numbers, Serzh Sargsyan has said that this is about a few schools, while his government’s Minister Armen Ashotyan considered those “few schools” to be 8 in Yerevan and 7 in the regions, later changed to 9 in Yerevan and 2 in the regions.  Which Russian, German or other diplomatic representatives have enough families in Armenia to fill these 15 or 11 schools?  How many foreign-language speaking children are there in Yerevan, such that 9 schools need to be allocated to them? According to Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia used to allocate only 1 percent of its GDP to education, while the 2010 budget has seen that figure rise to 4 percent.  “This is slightly more than our allocation to the army.”  The more people speak, the more the truth is revealed.  According to date from 2005, the budget for the Armenian armed forces was 3.6 percent of the GDP.  If, after 5 years, the budget is “slightly less than the allocation to education”, how can we say that our army is better prepared today than ever before? These contradictory statements suggest that our authorities are uninformed about each other.  The Armenian President in Berlin was trying to present the situation in a skewed way in order to calm the people, continuing to do what he did during the days of “football diplomacy” when he presented what was clearly a set of preconditions by Turkey as the establishment of bilateral relations without preconditions.