Armenian party leader downbeat on government-opposition dialogue

Noyan Tapan news agency
11 May 04

Yerevan, 11 May: “The current political consultations between the
coalition and opposition forces will hardly yield any result, because
the coalition has no elementary powers, which are concentrated in the
hands of President Robert Kocharyan,” Garnik Markaryan, chairman of
the Motherland and Honour Party, said in an interview with a Noyan
Tapan correspondent. He thinks that the president “is using the
coalition forces as a tool for preserving his power”.

Markaryan noted that the political consultations in essense have
substituted the real negotiations conducted between the sides by
the council of elders of the intelligentsia forum. “The fact that
the opposition went for these consultations is another mistake,”
he is sure.

Garnik Markaryan said that if the opposition does not drastically
change its organizational and management methods, it will be difficult
to expect any positive changes in its favour in the domestic political
process.

Apart from this, it is necessary to expand the geography of the
opposition’s activity, keeping Yerevan as the centre of the events
of course: “We must not forget that in Armenia there are also other
huge cities and regional centres”.

As for the possibility of changing the authorities’ behaviour,
connected with Resolution No 1374 of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe (PACE) on Armenia, Garnik Markaryan stated
that the ruling administration “has no desire to change anything,
and the process of intimidation and persecution is continuing”.