L.T.P. – IN FAVOR THE RECONGITION OF NAGORNO KARABAKH
S. Haroutyunyan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on April 29, 2008
Armenia

Before the elections, the members of "Heritage" faction announced
that their party had no "fundamental discords" with L. Ter-Petrosyan
and his team with regard to the settlement of the Krabakh conflict.

Yesterday we asked the leader of "Heritage" whether before putting the
legal initiative into circulation, he had discussed the issue with the
former President whom he strongly supported during the presidential
elections. We also tried to know whether it is possible for LTP to
support this initiative proposed by "Heritage" party.

R. Hovhannisyan responded to our question in an abrupt manner, "You
are asking me a hypothetical and nonsensical question. I haven’t said
anything of the kind. If, as a professional journalist, you open our
Web site, , you will find not only the program of our
party, but also my own program regarding Artsakh, which consists of
10 clauses."

And he immediately distinguished himself from LTP’s attitude as a
savior of the nation, indicating the results of the voting. "On the
contrary, we can say that the major part of the National Assembly
and LTP have no discords."

Agree with me that this gives rise to the following question: if the
leader of "Heritage" had fundamental discords with LTP in such vital
issues as the recognition of the NKR independence, how could he have
supported his candidacy during the presidential elections. Or, maybe,
he considers it a secondary issue and thinks it worthless to break off
his relations with the opposition’s united candidate because of that.

We wonder what NA Speaker Tigran Torosyan thinks in this
regard. Whether the fact that the NA majority voted down "Heritage"
party’s initiative to include the bill on "recognition" into the agenda
really means that the coalition, particularly, the "Republican" is
LTP’s "ally" and co-thinker as much as the settlement of the Karabakh
conflict is concerned.

"I believe any sensible person realizes very well what issue was being
discussed in the Parliament, and what the attitude of the National
Assembly was. During the discussion of the agenda, the answer to the
question was given in a clear-cut manner. The issue discussed in the
hall did not concern Armenia’s recognition of the NKR independence;
it was a bill which, in the opinion of the NA majority, should not
have been included in the agenda now.

Moreover, the negative results of the voting cannot, in any way, be
interpreted as an argument that the majority agrees with Ter-Petrosyan
as well as the ‘Karabakh concept’ proposed by his team."

In addition, the NA Speaker said, "In my brief speech regarding the
bill I said that I didn’t think there might be people in the hall
whose viewpoints concerning the solution of the Karabakh issue and
this particular question might be different. Unfortunately, some
speeches convinced me that I was mistaken. When a person says there
are no grounds for the RA citizen to ensure NKR security, I think this
make everything clear in terms of that person’s attitude towards the
Karabakh issue and all our problems in general.

We may advance a couple of questions which really showed that I was
very optimistic when announcing that we all shared the same views
with regard to the settlement of the NKR conflict."