ARMENIAN SECURITY SERVICES SUSPECTED OF SPYING ON OPPOSITION LEADER
By Emil Danielyan
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
May 1 2007
Armenia’s intensifying parliamentary election campaign has been
jolted by a scandal over the secret recording of a recent confidential
meeting between a top opposition leader and a Yerevan-based Western
diplomat. Details of that conversation have been controversially
disclosed by a pro-establishment newspaper, in what is widely seen
as a government effort to discredit Artur Baghdasarian, the former
parliament speaker whose Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) party is a
major opposition contender in the May 12 elections.
Baghdasarian’s meeting with the number two figure at the British
Embassy in Armenia, held at a popular Yerevan restaurant last
February, reportedly focused on the authorities’ handling of the
upcoming vote. The Russian-language paper, Golos Armenii, claims to
have received audio of that conversation from unknown individuals,
publishing much of its purported transcript on April 21 and April 26.
The disclosed content of the conversation was hardly sensational,
with Baghdasarian reportedly urging the European Union to express
serious concern at what he described as government plans to rig the
elections. He reportedly stated that they can already be considered
fraudulent because the government is seriously restricting opposition
access to the electronic media and intimidating and bribing voters.
The diplomat was quoted as responding that the EU is unlikely to do
that at the moment because the Armenian leadership is very careful
and canny in trying to retain control over the country’s next
parliament. "I suppose that they are smarter and wiser than we are …
There has to be some blatant violation in order for the EU to come
up with such a statement," he said, according to Golos Armenii. The
diplomat was also said to have complained that of all major EU states
having diplomatic missions in Yerevan, only Britain and Germany
seriously care about Armenia’s democratization.
Orinats Yerkir and its leader swiftly denounced the secret recording,
illegal under Armenian law, saying that it is part of a "well-prepared
smear campaign" waged by the ruling regime against the party. They
argued that the newspaper report did not expose anything new or
extraordinary as Baghdasarian has repeatedly stressed in his public
pronouncements the need for Armenia to finally have an election
recognized as free and fair by the West. The British Embassy also
condemned the recording as "dishonest and deplorable." In an April
26 statement, the embassy said British diplomats regularly meet with
a wide range of Armenian politicians in order to have "as complete
and objective a view as possible of the political process."
That is a "normal and accepted practice of any embassy anywhere in
the world," it said. Both the embassy and Baghdasarian charged that
the content of the conversation in question was distorted but did
not elaborate.
Golos Armenii and other supporters of President Robert Kocharian
directed their fury at Baghdasarian, saying that he behaved dishonestly
and unpatriotically by seeking EU criticism of his country months
before election day. Kocharian went further, accusing his former
protege of committing high treason on April 27. "For me, this is a
real manifestation of treason," he told students at Yerevan State
University. "That manifestation is all the more ugly given that
it was done at his own initiative." Baghdasarian’s response to the
attack was equally strongly worded. "The traitors," he told reporters,
"are those who rig elections and disgrace the fatherland."
The bitter exchange was quite a change from the relationship that
existed between the two men before Orinats Yerkir was forced to
quit Armenia’s governing coalition one year ago. Kocharian had
gone to great lengths to ensure that Baghdasarian would be elected
parliament speaker after Orinats Yerkir finished second in the last
general elections, held in May 2003. That fuelled speculation that
Kocharian could handpick Baghdasarian, now 38, as his successor after
completing his second and final term in office in early 2008. Their
personal rapport subsequently deteriorated due to Orinats Yerkir’s
growing criticism of the government (in which it was represented)
and conciliatory line on the Armenian opposition.
The populist party, which has a pro-Western foreign policy agenda,
is now thought to be one of the country’s most popular opposition
groups. The latest attempt to discredit it suggests that Kocharian and
Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian are worried about its possible strong
showing in next week’s polls. Yet the disclosure of Baghdasarian’s
meeting with the British diplomat is unlikely to seriously affect
the ambitious ex-speaker’s popularity rating, not least because
few Armenians buy into state propaganda. Instead, it increases the
possibility of Orinats Yerkir’s involvement in post-election street
protests planned by other, more radical opposition forces.
The scandal has also cast a fresh spotlight on the role of the
National Security Service (NSS), the Armenian successor to the KGB,
in political processes in the country. The feared security agency
marks the anniversaries of the establishment of Bolshevik Russia’s
VChK secret police as a professional holiday, and its function of
political policing has been increasingly obvious in recent years.
Kocharian’s office, for example, revealed last December the
existence of a hitherto unknown NSS division charged with protecting
"constitutional order." Many Armenian politicians, journalists and
other government critics have long suspected that their phones
are illegally wiretapped by the NSS. Few of them doubt that NSS
agents secretly recorded Baghdasarian’s meeting. Kocharian sought to
disprove this dominant view, saying that another opposition leader,
Aram Karapetian, got hold of audio of the conversation before Golos
Armenii. The radical oppositionist, who was interrogated by the NSS
on April 25, believes that the ex-KGB deliberately sent the recording
to his office to deflect suspicions about its involvement.
In any case, the whole affair is a serious cause for concern for
local commentators, human rights activists and probably Yerevan-based
Western diplomats. As the pro-opposition newspaper Zhamanak Yerevan
editorialized on April 26, "Nobody can now be sure that there are no
‘bugs’ planted in their apartment, that their phone conversations
are not wire-tapped, that their every step is not watched."
(Haykakan Zhamanak, April 28; RFE/RL Armenia Report, April 27, April
23; Golos Armenii, April 21, April 26; Statement by the British
embassy, April 26; Zhamanak Yerevan, April 26)