KOCHARIAN WARNS PREDECESSOR AGAINST COMEBACK
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Sept 25 2007

President Robert Kocharian rejected on Tuesday grave accusations
leveled against him by former President Levon Ter-Petrosian and warned
his predecessor against seeking to return to power.

Breaking his nearly decade-long silence with a speech on Friday,
Ter-Petrosian lashed out at the current government in Yerevan which he
described as "corrupt and criminal" and accused of turning Armenia into
a "third world" nation. He claimed that the Kocharian administration’s
failure to cut a peace deal with Azerbaijan is increasingly putting
the country’s future at risk.

In his first public reaction to the Ter-Petrosian speech, Kocharian
dismissed the accusations by pointing to Armenia’s robust economic
growth that has averaged 13 percent per annum since 2002. "Today
Armenia is one of the fastest developing countries in the world,"
he said in remarks broadcast by state television. "The most
effective reforms are being implemented in Armenia. And if those
characterizations [made by Ter-Petrosian] really applied to Armenia,
we would never have such success."

Kocharian also cited a substantial increase in government spending
over the past decade. "I became prime minister of Armenia in March
1997 and inherited a $300 million [state] budget with a deficit of
about $40 million," he said. "Next year, Armenia will have a budget
worth about $2.5 billion. Just compare [the two figures]."

"One has to be extremely self-isolated in order not to see what has
happened in the country," he added in a jibe at the extremely low
profile kept by Ter-Petrosian since his resignation in 1998.

Kocharian went on to emphasize that he has until now avoided publicly
attacking his predecessor out of respect for independent Armenia’s
first president. He indicated that he will no longer restrain himself
if Ter-Petrosian decides to contest the forthcoming presidential
elections.

"If the first president enters political struggle, then he will become
an ordinary opposition figure with all the consequences stemming
from that, and we will have to remind [Armenians] of many things,"
warned Kocharian. "For example, how many streets were lit in Yerevan
in 1996 and so on. There were only three [such streets.]"

Kocharian and his chief lieutenant, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian,
have already capitalized on painful popular memories of Armenia’s
economic collapse and severe energy crisis of the early 1990s to keep
Ter-Petrosian and loyalists at bay. Political groups and electronic
media loyal to the two men have for years blamed the latter for
persisting socioeconomic problems facing many Armenians.

The government-controlled Armenian Public Television reacted to
Ter-Petrosian’s speech at the weekend with a scathing report that
accused the country’s former leadership of mismanaging the economy,
rigging elections and being responsible for several high-profile
killings of the early 1990s. Some pro-Ter-Petrosian papers hit back
on Tuesday by a citing an even longer list of such killings, including
the October 1999 terrorist attack on the Armenian parliament, committed
during Kocharian’s rule.

Ter-Petrosian’s speech at an indoor reception organized by his party,
the Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh), came as a possible prelude
to his presidential run sought by his supporters. He told hundreds of
them that he has not yet decided whether to enter the fray despite
touring Armenia for the past few weeks to gauge popular support for
his comeback.

The HHSh and other opposition groups sympathetic to Ter-Petrosian
say that the ex-president is the only opposition politician capable
of defeating Sarkisian, the presumed election favorite. The claim is
disputed by other opposition leaders.

Both Kocharian and Sarkisian became the wartime leaders of
Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992 thanks to their warm ties with Armenia’s
HHSh-led government and Ter-Petrosian in particular. Those ties
catapulted the two men to high-ranking positions in Yerevan later in
the 1990s. They were key players in a subsequent power struggle that
ended in Ter-Petrosian’s dramatic resignation in 1998.