Haykakan Zhamanak , Armenia
June 11 2009

Secret meeting

Interesting details have emerged about the meetings the Assistant US
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dr Philip Gordon
have had in Yerevan as part of his regional tour of late. In
particular, the press service of the US embassy in Armenia told us
yesterday that Philip Gorgon had met with Heritage Party leader Raffi
Hovhannisyan.

When Gordon said during his press conference that he had met with the
opposition, he in fact meant Hovhannisyan. But there were at least two
strange factors in connection with the meeting. The first was that
nobody from the Heritage party was aware of the Philip Gordon – Raffi
Hovhannisyan meeting. Let us remind you that late in the evening when
Philip Gordon had already left Armenia, Heritage officially told us
that the US assistant secretary of state had not met anybody from
their party. Moreover, Heritage also mentioned that had such a meeting
been held, they would have informed about it and that they would have
circulated a press release. And when yesterday we had the US embassy’s
official response, we approached the Heritage Party spokesman Hovsep
Khurshudyan, asking him to tell us the subject of the discussion held
between Gordon and Hovhannisyan. We asked him to explain why nothing
was released about the meeting. The interesting point was that
Khurshudyan was unable to give details of the meeting, saying that he
was unaware of it.

The second was that Gordon, who criticized the process of the May 31
election and said that a statement would follow in that regard, did
not meet representatives of a main political force against which all
the violations had taken place. Those were the violations about which
Philip Gordon and Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had commented.

It is at least strange. By doing so, does the American side not take
responsibility for the violations and forgery and thus encourage the
Armenian authorities? Moreover, do they not use the statement on
violations to threaten the Armenian authorities in order to strike a
deal with them: the USA keeps silence thus forcing Armenia to make
some compromises. This will become clear after the US embassy releases
its statement on the elections and when Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham
Aliyev meet to discuss the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict.

By the way, we cannot exclude that Philip Gordon had one more reason
not to meet representatives of the Armenian National
Congress. According to our information, in all meetings with
representatives of the US Department of State, and particularly with
Matthew Bryza, the [Armenian National] Congress has raised quite
serious questions and has had very serious discussions with them. By
not meeting with representatives of the Congress, Gordon perhaps
wanted to avoid an awkward situation where he would have to give
specific answers.

P.S. At a meeting with us yesterday, Levon Zurabyan, coordinator of
the Armenian National Congress, refused to comment on the behaviour of
the US assistant secretary of state.