Yesterday Levon Zurabyan from Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s team stated in a news conference that the government hasn’t ever initiated any negotiations with them. He expressed his intention of starting a dialog, however later noticed that “it is impossible to negotiate with someone who on one hand punches you and wants o shake your hand with the other one.” In his opinion if the prisons are full of detainees it will be impossible to hold a dialog. According to him the negotiations must not be conducted in a forcible manner. One of the basic reasons to resolve the problem according to Zurabyan should be the willingness of the government to release the citizens, who were imprisoned because of their political views. “We have noting to prove neither to our society nor the international community. This is a simple totalitarian persecution for political views,” he said. He said that a wide movement was developed before February 19 in Armenia to assure L. Ter-Petrosyan’s victory at the presidential election. After the society saw the awful conditions of voting and count of votes, many people, who did not put up with what happened, joined the movement. These people started to take part in thousand-strong rallies. "The second stage covered the period from February 20 to March 1, and on March 1, the third stage began, when the regime shot at its own people, as a result of which it finally lost any support in the society. Now, everyone, who worked for the power candidate is ashamed of it", Zurabyan said. The oppositionist emphasized that not a fight of the opposition against the authorities but a fight of the whole society against the regime for freedom and democracy takes place in the country Zurabyan stated hat the government is not interested in revealing the truth about the events of March 1. In this context, Zurabyan said it is necessary to conduct independent international investigation. Zurabyan says if the government has no problem with exposing the truth, it must agree to an independent international investigation. Levon Zurabyan also said that now they are collecting evidence and facts on what happened to present them to the society. Let us also add that when meeting the special commissioner of the EU Peter Semneby yesterday the Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan said, “The Prosecutor General’s Office is willing to create all the necessary conditions to provide the normal expertise of foreign investigators.”
