WEST UNPREPARED TO MEDDLE IN ARMENIA
By Emil Danielyan for EurasiaNet

Spero News
March 21 2007

The US and the EU are unlikely to ostracize Armenia, despite election
warnings

The US and the EU are stepping up pressure on the Armenian government
to hold free-and-fair parliamentary elections on 12 May. They have
warned that if the upcoming vote is deemed fraudulent, Yerevan could
forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in additional development
assistance, and undermine its efforts to forge closer links with
the West.

However, analysts are skeptical that the warnings will have
much influence on the behavior of President Robert Kocharian’s
administration. The outcome of the parliamentary balloting will go a
long way toward determining the political futures of both Kocharian
and his most powerful associate, Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian,
many Armenian political observers believe. Some say that neither the
US nor EU is prepared to take the kind of action that would seriously
challenge the president’s nearly decade-long grip on power.

None of the presidential and parliamentary elections held under
the Kocharian administration until now were judged democratic by
Western monitors. The most recent of those polls, held in early
2003, were marred by reports of widespread ballot box stuffing,
voter intimidation, vote buying, and other irregularities.

US and EU officials say the upcoming elections offer a unique
opportunity for the South Caucasus state to end its post-Soviet history
of electoral fraud. "People [in the West] feel that there can be no
more excuses," said one Western diplomat in Yerevan. "The Armenian
economy is growing, and there is no active war in Nagorno-Karabakh. So
it’s time for Armenia to graduate into a normal political life."

Cory Welt, a senior Russia and Eurasia analyst at the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed, saying that
a clean election would give a "huge boost" to Armenia’s international
reputation. "As time goes on, there are [fewer] reasons, not more, for
Western states to promote engagement with an Armenian government that
seeks to rule through anti-democratic methods," he told EurasiaNet.

The issue was reportedly high on the agenda of Armenian Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian’s 5 March talks in Washington with US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Top State Department officials,
including Rice, have repeatedly warned that if the forthcoming
elections again fall short of democratic standards, Yerevan will
risk losing US$235 million in US economic assistance promised under
the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a program designed to spur
political and economic reforms in developing nations. Armenia was
deemed eligible for the scheme, unveiled by President George W Bush in
2004, despite being one of the world’s leading per-capita recipients
of American aid.

Testifying before a foreign aid subcommittee of the US House of
Representatives on 15 March, the head of a US government agency
administering the MCA, John Danilovich, said he "communicated" with
Kocharian earlier this year to reiterate Washington’s "concerns that
elections be held in a correct manner." One of Danilovich’s deputies,
John Hewko, visited Yerevan for the same purpose earlier in March.

"We expect to see significant improvement over past elections,"
Hewko told reporters there.

For its part, the EU is tying the proper election conduct to Armenia’s
participation in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) framework that
entitles the country, along with neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan, to
a privileged relationship with the bloc, better access to its market,
and greater EU aid. Each of the three regional states signed with
the EU last November its own ENP action plan, each of which includes
provisions designed to promote democratization.

The EU’s Brussels-based special representative to the South Caucasus,
Peter Semneby, discussed preparations for the May polls with senior
Armenian officials during an early March visit to Yerevan. "It is
the first major election taking place in the South Caucasus after
we finalized the action plans," Semneby told RFE/RL. "And for that
reason it has an importance that goes beyond the borders of Armenia."

Failure to ensure its freedom and fairness would mean that Armenia
has lost an opportunity to build a "firm relationship" with the EU,
he warned.

Yet neither loss of the MCA funds, nor exclusion from the ENP would
threaten the political survival of Armenia’s two most powerful leaders
accustomed to Western criticism. Kocharian is believed to be planning
to hand over power to Sarkisian and remain in government in some
capacity after completing his second and final term in office in less
than a year from now. Continued control of the Armenian parliament
is seen as critical for the success of this putative scenario.

The US and the EU have so far left no indications that, in the event
of another deeply flawed election, they would openly challenge the
legitimacy of the authorities in Yerevan. "I don’t think the West will
take any sharp steps against Kocharian’s regime," Aleksandr Arzumanian,
a former foreign minister opposed to the current Armenian government,
told EurasiaNet. Arzumanian dismissed the Western incentives for
Armenia’s democratization, saying that they alone will not prevent
fresh vote rigging.

According to analyst Welt, Washington’s "only really significant
lever" is MCA aid and a "US stamp of approval" which it would give
to Yerevan. "Whether such US approval really matters to Armenia’s
authorities is another question," he said. "If they believe they
have sufficient support from countries like Russia and Iran, then
termination of MCA aid will mean little."

Another factor that may prompt the Bush administration to tread
lightly is connected with the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh peace
process, some observers believe. American, French and Russian
diplomats who are trying to broker a solution hope that Kocharian
and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will meet shortly after the
Armenian elections and finally cut a peace deal. Diplomats privy to
the peace process say Aliyev and Kocharian have already essentially
agreed on the basic principles of a peaceful settlement proposed by
the mediators. Washington, which has long held a Karabakh settlement
to be a top policy priority for the region, seems unlikely to undercut
either leader under the current circumstances.

Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and political analyst.

EurasiaNet provides information and analysis about political, economic,
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