INTERVIEW-ARMENIAN PM SEES VOTE AS SPRINGBOARD TO PRESIDENCY
By Hasmik Lazarian and Margarita Antidze
Reuters, UK
May 10 2007
YEREVAN, May 10 (Reuters) – Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarskyan
on Thursday gave his strongest signal yet he will seek his country’s
presidency, two days before a parliamentary vote seen as a dress
rehearsal for the presidential race.
Sarksyan, a trusted lieutenant of President Robert Kocharyan, is
leading the Republican party into Saturday’s election to choose a new
parliament for Armenia, an ancient Christian nation wedged between
Iran and Turkey.
"If the Republican party gets enough votes in the … election and
my party puts forward my candidacy for the presidential election,
I will take up this offer with pleasure," Sarksyan told Reuters in
an interview.
Kocharyan is to step down early next year when his second term ends,
triggering a presidential election.
Speaking in his office with a portrait of Kocharyan on the wall,
Sarksyan said he expected his party to win "much more" than 25 percent
in Saturday’s vote and to head a coalition government.
Opinion polls also point to this outcome.
"The presidential election will be an organic continuation of this
campaign as I don’t think tremendous changes can happen in the space
of a few months," said the 52-year-old.
Armenia’s last parliamentary election, in 2003, was described by
Western monitors as falling short of democratic standards. Opposition
leaders have said they will stage street protests if there is ballot
fraud in Saturday’s vote.
But Sarskyan said holding a clean vote was a "matter of extreme
importance" for his ex-Soviet state.
"Our independent republic is 15 years old and it’s time now for the
international community to recognise Armenia as a democratic country."
WELDER
Kocharyan and Sarskyan are both from Nagorno-Karabakh, the mainly
Armenian region of neighbouring Azerbaijan which fought a separatist
war in the 1990s.
A former welder, Sarksyan was at Kocharian’s side in the separatist
administration during the war. For nearly 15 years he has held senior
posts in Armenia’s government including defence minister and national
security minister.
The conflict is still unresolved, bringing instability to a South
Caucasus region that is emerging as a key transit route for oil and
gas from the Caspian Sea.
Armenia also has fraught relations with its neighbour Turkey, in part
because Ankara refuses to recognise as genocide the mass killings of
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey early in the last century.
Its closest ties are with Russia — which has military bases in
Armenia — and with Iran to the south.
"I don’t think there will be big shifts in foreign policy," said
Sarksyan. "We have long-term policies: we are in the European Union
neighbourhood programme, we have strategic alliances which we are
not going to abandon."
But he said Armenia wants its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey
re-opened. They were closed during the war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
"We are trying to normalise relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey …
We’ll try to bring Armenia out of its blockade."