The third convening and seventh session of the National Assembly has ended and parliamentarians are enjoying the beginning of their “long” vacation. June 16 marked the last parliamentary briefings of this session, however, the Rule of Law party, United Labor Party, “People’s MP” and the newly founded “Business” faction were not participating.
Recently, one of the most significant turn of events was the substitution of the OSCE Minsk Group American co-chairman Steven Mann with assistant to the U.S. Secretary of State Matthew Breisen. Besides that, Richard Hoagland will soon substitute the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to the U.S. John Evans.
“168 Hours” asked parliamentarians how these changes would affect the Karabagh conflict resolution and Armenia’s internal politics, especially since Matthew Breisen had announced that the U.S. would soon use its resources to develop democracy with the “down to up” scheme during his visit to Armenia early this year.
During the last parliamentary session, leader of the National Unity faction Artashes Geghamyan publicly put an end to the rumors about starting a revolution. In fact, he even “announced good tidings” about that by referring to the surveys conducted by the well-known American “Gelap” university.
“Recently, one of America’s well known survey centers, “Gelap”, as well as the U.S. International/State Institute and Armenian Sociological Association have made some analyses. Based on the surveys, 67-70% of Armenians say that changing the authorities through revolution is not the path to take towards development. In contrast to Armenians, Americans usually pay attention to what the people have to say. In this case, the people don’t want to change the authorities by starting a revolution,” said Geghamyan as he put an end to the talks about a revolution.
Geghamyan is of the opinion that things are looking up for the Karabagh conflict resolution what with the substitution of the American co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group and the U.S. Ambassador. However, he advises to pay attention to an “extremely decisive document, which has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.” According to Geghamyan, the U.S. is going to go against constructing and using the Kars-Akhalkalak railway route.
“They didn’t make that decision for the sake of the Armenian authorities. This will definitely hurt Armenian-Turkish relations. Turkey will not use that route, so the U.S. has to come up with an alternative, which is the Gyumri-Kars railway,” says Geghamyan. He advises the authorities to resolve the conflict “through skillful and correct diplomacy”.
Leader of the parliamentary ARF faction Hrair Karapetyan doesn’t really have anything to say about the substitution of the American co-chairman and the U.S. Ambassador.
“The next person appointed will go along with U.S. politics. I don’t think that the future establishment and development of democracy in Armenia has anything to do with starting or not starting a colorful revolution. Today, the state officials of the CIS countries that organized the colorful revolutions admit that the colorful revolutions have nothing to do with establishing democracy. On the contrary, there are many cases when Ukraine and Georgia have infringed upon the rights of the people. I disagree with the fact that there must be a colorful revolution in order to establish democracy in Armenia,” says Hrair Karapetyan.
Leader of the parliamentary Armenian Republican faction Galust Sahakyan is of the same opinon.
“In my opinion, the people who started the colorful revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine were the ones who suffered the most,” says Galust Sahakyan. As for the Karabagh conflict, Sahakyan believes that changing the co-chairman will not affect the “functions” of the conflict resolution process.
“I don’t think that there will be any serious changes in the Karabagh conflict resolution in 2006.”
Leader of the Justice faction Stepan Demirchyan took part in the parliamentary briefings too and since he recently had some meetings with Matthew Breisen, journalists asked him what impressions he had.
“I don’t want to talk about my personal impressions. I have no comment,” said Stepan Demirchyan.
But after a while, he said that he had good impressions. Mr. Demirchyan doesn’t really feel like expressing his opinions on the substitution of the American officials and the consequences that will follow.
“I wouldn’t want to make a big thing out of that. State officials change from time to time and there is no comment about that. U.S. foreign politics won’t really change much,” said Demirchyan and added that European integration must be the supremacy of Armenia’s foreign politics.
It is worth mentioning that the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group will meet in Vienna on June 22 and that meeting is going to be within the framework of the OSCE Constant council session. After the meeting, the co-chairmen will pay a visit to the region.