Agence France Presse — English
October 25, 2007 Thursday 2:04 AM GMT

Armenian ex-president mulls dramatic comeback: analysts

by Mariam Harutunian

A decade after being forced out of office, Armenia’s first
post-Soviet president Levon Ter-Petrosian is mulling a dramatic
comeback, eyeing a possible run for the presidency in February,
analysts say.

An advocate of compromise in Armenia’s long-running conflicts with
Azerbaijan and Turkey over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region,
Ter-Petrosian broke nearly 10 years of silence in a late September
speech.

He lambasted Armenia’s current leadership, saying the landlocked
ex-Soviet country is now run by "a mafia-style regime that has
plunged us into the ranks of Third World countries."

In recent weeks, Ter-Petrosian, 62, has been meeting with opposition
leaders and undertaken a series of visits to Armenian regions to
gauge voter support ahead of a presidential election expected to take
place in February.

Many expect him to announce his candidacy on Friday at a rally
planned in the Armenian capital Yerevan.

"I have no doubt that the former president will stand in the upcoming
elections and will declare it soon," said Alexander Iskandarian, a
Yerevan-based political analyst.

The reclusive ex-president’s re-emergence has set Armenia abuzz,
injecting drama into a political race that was previously seen as a
cakewalk for President Robert Kocharian’s chosen successor, Prime
Minister Serzh Sarkisian.

After two terms, Kocharian is constitutionally barred from running
again.

Analysts say Kocharian’s government is taking the threat of
Ter-Petrosian’s return seriously. On Tuesday, police detained about a
dozen activists, including the editors of two opposition newspapers,
as they urged people to attend Friday’s rally in central Yerevan. The
activists were released on Wednesday.

An academic and historian, Ter-Petrosian led Armenia from its
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 to 1998, when he was
forced to resign by key members of his cabinet, including then-prime
minister Kocharian.

They forced him out over his backing of a peace plan for Nagorny
Karabakh that was seen as giving too much to Azerbaijan.

Backed by Armenia, the ethnic Armenian enclave broke away from
Azerbaijan in a war in the early 1990s that left thousands dead and
forced more than a million people on both sides to flee their homes.

Drawn-out peace talks have failed to resolve the dispute and Nagorny
Karabakh now exists in a legal limbo — with de facto independence
but not recognised internationally.

In his speech, Ter-Petrosian signalled he would seek to revive the
peace process, calling the unresolved dispute over Karabakh "the
greatest crime" of the current government.

He said Armenia needs to end its regional isolation by normalising
relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, which both closed their borders
with Armenia and imposed economic embargoes over the Karabakh
dispute.

If he does join the race, analysts expect the government will seek to
undermine Ter-Petrosian by reminding Armenians of the severe economic
hardships suffered under his rule and allegations that Ter-Petrosian
rigged elections while in power.

He controversially sent tanks into the streets of Yerevan in 1996 to
quell protests after a presidential election widely seen as
fraudulent.

"He made many mistakes and many people have still not forgiven him
for the difficulties they went through," political analyst David
Petrosian said.

In his first reaction to Ter-Petrosian’s speech, Kocharian said that
"if the first president enters the political arena … we will have
to remind (Armenians) of many things."

Still, analysts expect that many in Armenia’s fractured opposition,
which was trounced by pro-government parties in parliamentary
elections earlier this year, will rally behind Ter-Petrosian if he
announces his candidacy.

Several opposition leaders have welcomed his re-emergence and
analysts say at least two parties, the Republic Party and the
People’s Party of Armenia, are preparing to back him.

Ter-Petrosian has even met with leaders of the pro-government
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), which was banned and saw
dozens of its members jailed under his rule.

"Before his appearance there was no strong figure who could have
united the opposition. Now Ter-Petrosian can be such a figure and
have a chance at winning," Petrosian said.