ARMENIAN EXIT STRATEGY APPROVED BY PARLIAMENT
Karine Kalantarian

le/1967378.html
24.02.2010

The National Assembly approved Tuesday a government bill that will
make it easier for Armenia to annul its normalization agreements with
Turkey if Ankara continues to delay their ratification.

The relevant amendments to an Armenian law on international treaties
envisage the suspension or termination of agreements signed by Yerevan
before their entry into force.

President Serzh Sarkisian announced his intention to enact such
amendments in December in response to Turkish leaders’ continuing
statements making the ratification of the Turkish-Armenian "protocols"
conditional on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh. He made clear
that Yerevan will walk away from the deal if Ankara fails to implement
it within a "reasonable" time frame.

The parliament overwhelmingly passed the amendments in the first
reading, with only one of its factions, the opposition Zharangutyun
party, voting against them. Zharangutyun lawmakers, who have been
strongly opposed to the protocols, said Armenian law and international
conventions signed by Yerevan already allow for the abrogation of
international treaties.

Deputies from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun),
the other opposition party represented in the parliament, also
criticized the amendments but chose to vote for them. "It contains
necessary but insufficient formulations," one of them, Artsvik
Minasian, said before the vote. He said not only the president of
the republic but also the parliament must be empowered to invalidate
international agreements.

Armen Rustamian, another Dashnaktsutyun lawmaker who chairs the
parliament committee on foreign affairs, said the National Assembly
should also be given the right to ratify them with "reservations." He
denied any contradiction between the Dashnaktsutyun criticism of the
amendments and its deputies’ decision to vote for them.

"Voting against them means being against the of this necessary tool
by Armenia," Rustamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. "We need to
have such a tool."

The amendments were included on the parliament agenda just days
after Sarkisian formally sent the two Turkish-Armenian protocols
to the parliament for ratification. Leaders of the parliament’s
pro-presidential majority have repeatedly stated that the protocols
will not be put to the vote before their ratification by the Turkish
parliament.