LEVON TER-PETROSSYAN: THE POLITICAL FORCES THAT BACKED UP KOCHARYAN DURING HIS RULE ARE NOW TRYING TO ACT AS OPPOSITION AND THEREBY TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY
ArmInfo
2009-11-11 19:01:00
ArmInfo. Unlike the Armenian National Congress (ANC), which
has presented political arguments against the signing of the
Armenian-Turkish protocols, the other objecting parties (ARFD,
Ramkavar-Azatakan, Heritage) have given this problem an ideological
(Hay Dat) implication, which has nothing to do with real politics
and Armenia’s interests, the first president of Armenia Levon
Ter-Petrossyan said at ANC meeting today.
The ANC objects to the terms enabling Turkey to set up a committee
of historians and to link its rapprochement with Armenia with the
Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. The other parties have more objections:
particularly, they mention the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
by Turkey, the historical rights of the Armenian people, the material
compensation claims of western Armenians. They accuse the ANC of
passivity and lack of principles but in fact they have ignored the
key threat of the protocols: the committee of historians. By their
irrational claims they have unwillingly helped Presient Serzh Sargsyan
to raise his international image.
Even though Sargsyan faced personal humiliation during his Pan-Armenian
tour, the nationalist hysteria helped him to improve his positions on
the international arena and to appear as a pragmatic and decisive
politician, who can take courageous steps for the sake of his
principles. No coincidence that after the signing of the protocols
he was proclaimed as "European of the Week." Now he is just one step
away from the Nobel Prize and everybody knows what this step implies.
As regards ARFD’s protest against the recognition of the border,
Ter-Petrossyan stressed that this party has no right to raise
such a question as in its time ARFD itself concluded the Treaty of
Alexandropol stipulating the current state of the border. "It is unfair
to blame Serzh Sargsyan for the sins he did not commit. It was not
Sargsyan but ARFD and Bolsheviks that recognized the Armenian-Turkish
border, it was not Sargsyan but Robert Kocharyan that renounced the
territorial claims. It was not Sargsyan but Robert Kocharyan and Vartan
Oskanian that demanded recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey
and instead received a proposal to set up a commission of historians,
it was not Sargsyan but Kocharyan, Oskanian and Arkady Ghukasyan
that ousted Nagorno-Karabakh from the peace process. Sargsyan also
"inherited" the Madrid Principles from Kocharyan",- Ter-Petrossyan
said. According to him, in these issues Sargsyan is as guilty as the
rest of the forces that backed up Kocharyan during his rule and are
now trying to act as opposition thereby avoiding responsibility.