Russian embassy denies special services’ part in Armenian parliament shooting

ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow
11 May 05

YEREVAN

Today the Russian embassy in Armenia strongly denied reports about the
Russian special services’ involvement in the terrorist act in the
Armenian parliament in 1999, the embassy said in a statement here.

The statement was made “in connection with recent press articles about
the alleged involvement of the Russian special services in the tragic
events in the Armenian parliament on 27 October 1999”.

“This kind of claims, which have nothing to do with reality, are being
spread by the people who are well-known for their hatred of Russia’s
democratic reforms,” the embassy noted. They “are pursuing certain
provocative objectives aimed at creating a negative image of the new
Russia in the eyes of the world community,” the statement said.

The embassy noted “in that particular case, despite the Armenian
justice system’s well-known decision on a group terrorists led by
Nairi Unanyan, a doomed attempt is being made to undermine the
centuries-old relations between the Armenian and Russian people”.

“Under orders from his ‘boss’ former FSB [Russia’s Federal Security
Service] agent Alexander Litvinenko, who fled to the UK from criminal
charges brought by the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office and who is
patronized there by a well-known oligarch, has now made another crazy
claim,” the embassy said.

“In any case Litvinenko and the like would not succeed in driving a
wedge between Russia and Armenia and the brotherly peoples of the two
countries,” the statement said.

In various interviews Litvinenko claimed that the Main Intelligence
Directorate of the General-Staff of the Russian armed forces had
organized the terrorist act in the Armenian parliament. [Passage
omitted: recalls the incident of 27 October 1999 in the Armenian
National Assembly]