On Protocols, Authority and Resignations
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By Contributor on Sep 25th, 2009
By Ara Papian
A question has been raised a great deal lately, to which a clear
answer has not been given. Why is the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation demanding the resignation of the foreign minister, but does
not demand the resignation of the president? Although I am not a
member of the ARF, I shall try to answer this question, because it is
bad form, in principle, to leave questions raised by society
unanswered.
According to the current Constitution (Article 55, clause 7), the
president of the Republic of Armenia shall `… execute the general
guidance of the foreign policy …’. That is to say, as the leader, he
has the prerogative of generally directing foreign policy, but not
carrying it out. As a part of the executive branch, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs has, in turn, the prerogative of actually implementing
foreign policy. Moreover, the Foreign Ministry is bound to be lead by
the directives of this `general guidance’ and take corresponding steps
only within the given directives. Officials of the Foreign Ministry do
not have the right to work outside presidential directives and
negotiate on other issues, much less take on additional liabilities in
the name of the country.
What is our current situation? The president of the country has on
many occasions stated explicitly in public the normalization of
relations with Turkey without preconditions as a prime directive of
foreign policy. The foreign minister has also publicly repeated the
president’s position, emphasizing the main characteristic of the
policy being `without preconditions’. What is more, both the president
and the foreign minister have clarified more than once that
normalization in the current stage will essentially have two
directions: the establishment of diplomatic relations with Turkey, and
the opening of the – so-called, as I like to put it – border between
Armenia and Turkey.
There are no concerns on the first point. Naturally, we have
expectations from Turkey, and therefore we must establish diplomatic
relations so that we negotiate our expectations or equivalent
reparations. There are some questions pertaining to the second
point. However, there are no disputes really. We shall open the border
and we shall see that our expectations are not coming through, and we
shall be disappointed.
Now let us look over the current two protocols and see how exactly
they correspond to the president’s directive without preconditions. I
shall yet have the opportunity to discuss the said documents and to
reveal the more than ten unrelated liabilities in place, point by
point. Unrelated, because they do not have anything to do with
establishing diplomatic relations and to open the so-called border.
For now, let me bring up only one point, the presence of which
testifies as such to the dismissal of the policy directive and is
enough to render the entire document useless. The fifth clause of the
protocol on establishing diplomatic relations between the Republic of
Armenia and the Republic of Turkey says the following, word-for-word:
`Confirming the mutual recognition of the existing border between the
two countries as defined by the relevant treaties of international
law’.1
Putting aside in general the question of the relevance of such legal
treaties, let me simply stress that the aforementioned clause is well
beyond any precondition. This is a non-negotiable, sovereign duty of
the Republic of Armenia. That is to say, the parties have based the
establishment of diplomatic relations on `the mutual recognition of
the existing border’.
Clearly, the negotiators have acted ultra vires, that is to say, it is
evident that they have surpassed their own authority and ignored the
president’s directive. In a word, the negotiators acted in an area
which fell outside their legal authority.
How to salvage the situation? Armenia must not ratify the signed
protocols, citing that they do not reflect the intent and essence of
the negotiations as they were announced from the very beginning. The
Republic of Armenia must reaffirm its willingness to establish
diplomatic relations with the Republic of Turkey without preconditions
and to open the crossing points at the frontier, signing brief and
pointed documents which consists solely of those clauses.