New Times leader rules out a possible foreign interference with the
parliamentary election in Armenia

Arminfo
2007-04-21 18:00:00

Aram Karapetyan, a political expert and the leader of the oppositionist
New Times party, rules out a possible foreign interference with the
course of the parliamentary election in Armenia.

At today’s press-conference at the Azdak club, A.Karapetyan referred
to the April 20 statement made by Stanislav Chernyavsky, the Director
of the CIS International Institute of Monitoring Democracy Development
and a member of the observation mission of the CIS Interparliamentary
Assembly. To remind, yesterday S.Chernyavsky said: "We can’t be
completely objective when estimating the election in Armenia, as
we are interested in consolidation of stability and progress in
the country". Commenting upon the Russian observer’s statement at
ArmInfo correspondent’s request, A.Karapetyan pointed out that it
means the international observers will approve the choice of the
people. At the same time, he pointed out the fact that the foreign
diplomats accredited in Armenia, as well as the heads of international
organizations’ missions seem to dissociate from the parliamentary
election, preferring either to keep silence or to leave the country
for the election period.

As for the Russian high-ranking officials’ visits to Armenia that have
recently become too frequent, A.Karapetyan thinks that one shouldn’t
qualify these visits as Moscow’s attempts to support the Republican
Party of Armenia and Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. "Russia
is interested not in Armenia but the whole region, and it is a weak
PR action to show this as a support," he said.