ARMENIAN INTERNET COMMUNITY: ARMENIA LOSES INFORMATION WAR

YEREVAN, MAY 17. ARMINFO. The information spread May 16 evening by
Mass Media, including Gazeta.ru and RFE/RL, that Azerbaijani Foreign
Minister Elmar Mamedryarov stated about the “agreement of the Armenian
party to return 7 regions under control of the Karabakh Army” arose
turmoil in the Armenian Internet Community.

In particular, the administration of ArmenianHouse.org as well as of
the community AKB Forums and forums Hayastan.com. Havatamk.arakel.ru
and OpenArmenia came out with a joint statement in this connection.
“Of course the Azerbaijani party have made such statements before,
and the first thought that came to mind when reading it was .” At
one of the forums (OpenArmenia.com) there was a proposal to contact
the Armenian Foreign Ministry or the Presidential Staff the following
day to demand information in this connection. After all, the Armenian
public has a right to be informed of developments around the issue.
Other large Armenian forums joined the initiative.

However, all the efforts to get any information were failed. The
Presidential Staff informed one of the forum’s representatives that
they could not make any comments so far. The Foreign Ministry were
even surprised hearing about the statement of Mamedyarov. They asked
where the statement was found, and then they asked how the web-site
Gazeta.ru is written with Latin letters or Russian. Writing down
the address of one of the most popular Russian internet-newspapers,
the Foreign Ministry promised to make a return statement within two
days if necessary. “Our authorities must understand that the Karabakh
issue has always been in the focus of attention of the country’s
citizens and such negligence is inadmissible. Such omissions in the
issues related to Karabakh conflict is a direct way to extraordinary
elections. Such was the response of many people, including supporters
of the incumbent president Robert Kocharyan,” the statement says.