NOT TO START NEGOTIATIONS WITH PRECONDITIONS
S. Haroutyunyan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on May 21, 2008
Armenia

ARFD representative ARMEN ROUSTAMYAN, Head of the NA Foreign Affairs
Committee, presents his considerations on Raffi Hovhannisyan’s
"intermediary mission" of organizing a dialogue between the leaders
of coalition parties and L. Ter-Petrosyan, leader of the radical
opposition.

"Such proposals are not made in an impromptu manner. I learned
about the initiative yesterday, and I don’t think the individuals
R. Hovhannisyan has turned to are the least occupied people in the
republic. There is an agenda and naturally, a certain workload for
everyone, and it is impossible to attend that discussion, setting
aside everything else.

If Mr. Hovhannisyan acts as a party, I believe "Heritage" is a
party rather than a mediator because it supported L. Ter-Petrosyan;
therefore, acting as a mediator is a little bit unconceivable. I
think he could have raised that question there too. Unfortunately,
that didn’t happen.

A dialogue should be started from he right point, and it is necessary
to prepare for that. The working group works on a concrete document
that reflects all the problems specified by Mr. Hovhannisyan and
what’s more, there are clear-cut proposals in 9 different directions;
there are certain steps that have been undertaken and are being
implemented. Therefore, it’s still a question which document is
realistic: the one that was thoroughly discussed or the one that just
occurred to somebody?"

"Is there a big difference between the ‘complex program’ proposed by
R. Hovhannisyan and the option predetermined by the working group?"

"I don’t want present a thorough discussion of the document. I
repeat that the principal issue is that it is necessary to prepare
for a dialogue and not to start everything from naught. The working
croup continues its activities, and it’s really laudable that
Mr. Hovhannisyan was participating in yesterday’s hearing.

By the way, it is not required for the group to meet at the
Presidential Residence by all means; the meeting may take place
wherever Raffi Hovhannisyan likes. But our work should be scheduled
if we really want to achieve something through a dialogue.

As regards the contents, there are a lot of things acceptable to us;
moreover, we voiced those problems long ago. In particular, I don’t
see a big difference between the democratic center mentioned by
Mr. Hovhannisyan and the public council proposed by us. I believe
the important thing is the contents rather than the name.

In terms of raising the role of the opposition, we propose Donk’s
formula which clearly defines what posts should be held by each
political faction in the parliamentary committees. The National
Assembly currently has one pro-opposition faction. Mr. Hovhannisyan,
with his 6 MPs, is the only representative of the opposition,
but he has pretensions for 10 posts; he proposes that 4 members
be Chairs of committees, 5 members be Vice Chairs and in addition,
claims that the post of one the NA Vice Chair be reserved for the
opposition. That’s to say, 6 people should hold 10 posts, and this,
naturally, is not realistic.