PORTRAITS OF LEADING CANDIDATES IN ARMENIA PRESIDENTIAL POLL

Agence France Presse — English
February 17, 2008 Sunday 1:53 AM GMT

Nine candidates are running Tuesday in a presidential election in
ex-Soviet Armenia. The four leading candidates are:

Serzh Sarkisian

Sarkisian, 53, is Armenia’s prime minister and close ally of President
Robert Kocharian.

Kocharian tapped Sarkisian as his successor after the prime minister’s
Republican Party swept parliamentary elections in May.

Sarkisian is widely seen as a hawk in Armenia’s fraught relations
with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Sarkisian is from the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh, an ethnic
Armenian enclave that broke away from Azerbaijan in a bloody war in
the early 1990s. A former head of the separatist army, Sarkisian has
held key posts in the Armenian government, including as head of the
interior and defence minister.

A January poll of 1,500 Armenian voters by British pollster Populus
gave Sarkisian 50.7 percent support. He is married and has two
children.

Artur Baghdasarian

Baghdasarian, 39, is a former speaker of parliament who fell out with
the government and joined the opposition.

His Rule of Law party won nine seats in the 131-seat National Assembly
in May’s parliamentary elections, the most of any opposition party.

A former chairman of the French University in Armenia, Baghdasarian
is seen as more pro-Western than the current government, which has
fostered strong ties with Moscow.

Born in the capital Yerevan and a lawyer by training, Baghdasarian
was first elected to parliament 1995. Re-elected in 1999 and 2003,
he was the influential speaker from 2003 to 2006, when he was ousted
after for criticising the authorities.

The Populus poll gave him 13.4 percent of the vote. He is married
and has two children.

Levon Ter-Petrosian

Ter-Petrosian, 63, was Armenia’s president from 1991 until his
resignation in 1998. He broke 10 years of silence last year to announce
his comeback bid for the presidency.

Opponents blame Ter-Petrosian for economic chaos that engulfed the
country in the 1990s and accuse him of fixing his election wins.

Supporters say he is an experienced statesman who could help end
Armenia’s international isolation. Ter-Petrosian has called for a more
conciliatory approach with neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey, both of
which have cut diplomatic ties and sealed their borders with Armenia.

Born in Aleppo, Syria, Ter-Petrosian’s family moved to Soviet Armenia
shortly after his birth. A political scientist, Ter-Petrosian
was elected leader of Soviet Armenia in 1990, shortly before its
independence. He was elected the country’s first post-Soviet president
in 1991 and re-elected in 1996, before he was forced to step down in
1998 for advocating concessions with Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh.

The Populus poll gave Ter-Petrosian 12.6 percent of the vote. He is
married and has one son and three grandchildren.

Vahan Hovannisian

Hovannisian, 41, is the deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament
and the candidate of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF),
one of Armenia’s oldest political parties.

Born in Yerevan, Hovannisian is a historian and archaeologist who
was first elected to parliament in 1999. The ARF, or Dashnaktsutiun
as the party is widely known, is a socialist and nationalist party
with strong links to the Armenian diaspora. The party was banned in
the early 1990s for an alleged plot to overthrow the government, but
was a member of Kocharian’s governing coalition from 1998 until last
year. It won 16 seats in May’s parliamentary elections and while not
a member of the current coalition, continues to support the government.

Hovannisian was chosen as the party’s presidential candidate in
November in an Armenia-wide vote of party members — reportedly the
first primary-style selection of a candidate in the country’s history.

The Populus poll gave him 7.6 percent of the vote. He is married and
has two children.