On February 17, the Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian presented the graduating certificates to the first graduating students of the MFA Diplomatic School.
           
Representatives of the international organizations- Heads of the EU and OSCE offices in Yerevan - who supported the School, also attended the ceremony.

At the ceremony Edward Nalbandian particularly noted:

"Dear graduates, I am congratulating you on the occasion of graduating the first course of the MFA Diplomatic School. Henceforward your name will be written on the first page of the Diplomatic School. And together with you we are turning that first page handling you the graduation certificates. Our School is a fresh one and has functioned for only a year. I am sure that it will become more accomplished and productive for preparing and training the personal at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia.  I would like also to mention that it was possible to establish this School in virtue of the attention and caring of the leadership of our country - the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan - and the support provided by the EU and OSCE to our School, as well. Today the Heads of the EU Delegation to Armenia and OSCE Office in Yerevan Ambassador Raul de Luzenberger and Ambassador Sergey Kapinos are attending the ceremony and I would like to express my gratitude to them. I would like to thank all the countries, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of those countries and diplomatic educational institutions who supported our School.

Experts from Russia, Estonia, Finland, the United States, United Kingdom, Romania, Japan, Slovakia and Switzerland delivered lectures in the School. A number of Foreign Affairs Ministers and two dozen Ambassadors addressed speeches in our School.

This one year course was rather exhaustive, but I reiterate that these are the first steps and I am sure that our School will become more accomplished and productive year by year. 

Some of you, who successfully graduated the course and passed the exams, including the finals, will recruit to the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I would like to wish a success to all of you, to those who graduated and who are going to work at the Ministry.

You know that the students, who have gotten a job at the Ministry, should pass a period of probation at the MFA and afterwards they will become a diplomat. I am confident that those who will not have that chance, new perspectives are opening up before them.

I would like to congratulate you, all of you and to wish a smooth path. It is great honor and happiness for me to present you those certificates. I would like also to thank the Director of the Diplomatic School, the Deputy Foreign Ministers, the heads of various department of the Ministry, all those who lectured in the School. That will continue this year as well.    

You know that the new attendees will enter the School soon.  The part of the exams has been already passed and the next phase of the exams will be held very soon those days. And as it was last year, 25 new attendees will enter the School.

I hope that all this will continue and there will be a day in the future when not all of the diplomats of the Ministry, but a part of them are the graduating students of the Diplomatic School of the RA MFA.

I congratulate all of you and wish a good luck."

The successful 12 graduating students of the School were accepted into the diplomatic service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and after the successfully passing of the period of probation they will be awarded with the rank of attaché, the first diplomatic rank.