After the March 1 events numerous international institutions and officials called on the Armenian authorities to raise the state of emergency, the limitations on media and conduct independent investigation concerning the clampdown.
Besides petitioning, the American high rank officials also announced that they will impose specific penalties on Armenia if the authorities don’t provide the abovementioned conditions. First of all the mentioned announcement concerns the Millennium Challenges program, which managers have warned that they will suspend the programs financed by them. Specifically, last week the US State Department Secretary Condoleezza Rice said during the Q/A session on the US draft budget 2009 that the Millennium Challenges Armenia (MCA) program is undermined. She said that the recent state of emergency in Armenia has created an emergency to suspend some programs implemented in Armenia. According to Rice, there will be a need to warn the Armenians that the state of emergency undermines the MCA program as well. The executive director of the program John Danilovich has referred to this topic as well in his letter addressed to president Robert Kocharyan. The Millennium Challenges corporation has the right to suspend or terminate the agreement executed with Armenia if there is a serious political stagnation and this letter is an official warning that the recent events may have negative affect on the correspondence of Armenia to be financed by the Millennium Challenges corporation for the implementation of the corresponding program in Armenia. To note, according to the MCA program the USA were to provide $236 million to Armenia during five years to improve the water supply systems in village communities and reconstruct the roads. The program commenced in September 2006 and Armenia has received $16,5 million so far. Yesterday we were informed from the MCA office that they were still working normally and had not received an official decision from the head office of the MC to suspend the program. Yesterday the minister of trade and economic development of Armenia Nerses Eritsyan said that the Armenian government is working with the MC program for the purpose of clarifying those future activities, which concern the effective implementation of the program. “We need to also come to an agreement upon several indicates, which we will have to provide through several phases of activities,” the minister said. Mr. Eritsyan said that people should not make predictions concerning this program and present those predictions as a final result.
It is worth mentioning that the corporation is providing financial support for such programs in different countries only in case when those countries can comply to certain democratic conditions. Upon the commencement of the MCA program our country complied to those conditions. Now the financing country finds that in those terms Armenia is stagnating and if it does not provide the mentioned conditions, it will lose its financing. We wander whether it is possible that the program may be really suspended in the future and what will this suspension mean. “Yes, I think suspension of this program is possible. In this case it is not an issue of financing for me despite the fact that it is too important for our society and country too. Weakening political support by the USA can be more concerning than this fact,” says member of Heritage faction Stepan Safaryan. “You know, tell you frankly I think that these warnings are realistic, but I know that we have a possibility to blow those warnings. We have a possibility to work out the factors preventing that financial support. What I say concerns the media and state of emergency. I think that the problems will be solved and I hope the program will not be suspended,” said the secretary of the Armenian Republican Party Samvel Nikoyan.