Hayots Ashkharh Daily, Armenia
Nov 30 2007
WAR EPISODES NOT A MATERIAL WAR A PRE-ELECTION PR
The information regarding one of the episodes of the Karabakh war,
as publicized by ex-President L. Ter-Petrosyan during the meeting
with the representatives of the youth organized on November 3 in
`Armenia-Marriott’ hotel and the subsequent discussions held during
the past month in that connection, threaten to change the simple
tricks used during the pre-election campaign into a process of
disclosing state secrets.
Let’s note that highly appreciating Prime Minister Serge
Sargsyan’s investment in the process of the creation of the Army, he,
at the same time, accounted for this person’s being appointed a
Defense Minister by the following, seemingly naïve episode, `I
brought Serge Sargsyan from Moscow and not from Karabakh. Serge
Sargsyan was exiled from Karabakh; he had problems and serious
conflicts there’.
After a short while, Yerjankik Abgaryan, one of the `outstanding’
representatives of the Armenian pan-National Movement-led government,
committed himself to elucidating the `naïve’ hint, insisting that by
saying `exile’ Mr. Ter-Petrosyan meant S. Sargsyan’s conflicts with
Samvel Babayan, Commander of the NKR Defense Army.
Following one another, Seyran Ohanyan, Head of the Chief
Headquarter of the Armed Forces, and Samvel Babayan soon refuted this
`information trap’ which was used for specific purposes. Similar to
story of making a mountain out of a molehill, these `disclosures’
gave rise to a specific kind of chain reaction that threatens to
reveal new and new episodes from the Karabakh war.
In particular, after Samvel Babayan made statements in response,
promising to bring concrete facts to prove how the former authorities
of Armenia impeded him in liberating the territories and providing
supplies to the Defense Army, (S. Sargsyan had let for Moscow with
that purpose), he himself became a target for attacks.
In the meantime, disclosures and subsequent refutations regarding
various episode of the Karabakh war are beginning to appear in the
press. Such information is publicized by people who disguise
themselves behind the names of warriors. And this gradually changes
the current campaign into a long range of `military political PRs’.
Considering the active participation of a number of key figures
representing both the former and the present-day authorities,
including the veterans of the Karabakh war, this phenomenon could, in
some respect, be considered natural if the war were over, and the
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty were signed. In such conditions,
discussions on military topics could be estimated as sincere attempts
of clarifying the role and investment of each of our political
figures in the historic developments.
But the whole problem is that it is not at all a `disclosure of
the newest history’, as some people mistakenly believe. The episodes
of the Karabakh war cannot be viewed as history unless the peace
treaty is signed. In case the episodes of the war, which ended with
the unsteady ceasefire agreement signed in 1994, continues to be
discussed with such paces, this may inevitably turn into a process of
disclosing military and military-political secrets.
It is not accidental that all the relevant pre-electoral
`PR-disclosures’ publicized in our press during the past month were
collected one by one and `assorted’ in the Azerbaijani `Analitika.az’
Web site.
We believe, that those who ex-officio possessed the military and
military-political information regarding the unfinished war i.e. the
ex-President and his surrounding world who are involved in the
campaign, as well as the commanders and generals who performed
important tasks during the war, must avoid touching upon it in the
course of the campaign, despite its unyielding and sharp nature.
ARMEN TSATOURYAN