ARMENIAN MAYOR ESCAPES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

The News – International, Pakistan –
April 4 2007

YEREVAN: A senior Armenian politician survived an assassination attempt
as he travelled home from a meeting to consider his party’s candidate
for the vacant post of prime minister, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Vardan Gukassyan, the mayor of Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri,
was severely injured in the gun attack while four people travelling
with him were killed, the prosecutor general’s office said in a
statement.

Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan met with his security ministers
and ordered them to do everything possible to find the attackers,
the president’s press service said.

Gukassyan had just attended a special session of the ruling Armenian
Republican Party’s governing council, which agreed to put forward the
acting defence minister, Serzh Sarksyan, as the country’s new prime
minister. His nomination follows the sudden death from a heart attack
last month of Andranik Margaryan.

The mayor, his deputy and their driver were all hospitalised following
the late-night attack while three bodyguards in an accompanying vehicle
died as they travelled home by road from the capital, Yerevan. The
driver later died in hospital.

So far, local authorities have no clear information on who carried
out the attack. In 1999, Armenia’s prime minister, Vazgen Sarksyan,
along with six politicians and officials, were shot dead when gunmen
stormed the national parliament building.