SARKISIAN RULES OUT JOB SWAP WITH KOCHARIAN
Radio Liberty
March 14 2008
Czech Republic
President Robert Kocharian will not after all become Armenia’s prime
minister after completing his second and final term in office early
next month, Prime Minister and President-elect Serzh Sarkisian said
late Thursday.
Kocharian’s political future has for months been the subject of
speculation, with most local observers expecting him seek to retain
a key role in government affairs after resigning as head of state. He
has been specifically linked with the post of prime minister.
Kocharian seemingly boosted his chances of landing the job by playing
a crucial role in the suppression of opposition protests against the
official results of last month’s disputed presidential election that
gave victory to Sarkisian.
Sarkisian quashed that speculation as he spent more than two hours
answering questions from Armenians on national television. He said
that had he and Kocharian really agreed to swap their positions they
would have informed the nation about that in advance of the February
19 election. "If such a scenario had been possible, we would have
announced this before the election the way Russian President Vladimir
Putin and [President-elect] Dmitry Medvedev did," he said.
Sarkisian again asserted that he has still not decided whom to name
prime minister after being sworn in as Armenia’s president on April
9. Meeting with university students in Yerevan earlier this week,
the outgoing premier said his new cabinet will be radically different
from the existing one. It is expected to comprise representatives of
Sarkisian’s Republican Party, the pro-Kocharian Prosperous Armenia
Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the hitherto
opposition Orinats Yerkir Party of former parliament speaker Artur
Baghdasarian.
In his televised remarks, Sarkisian indicated that he is ready
to engage in dialogue with his main election challenger, former
President Levon Ter-Petrosian, only if the latter recognizes his
election victory. "If Levon Ter-Petrosian continues to claim that he
was elected president with 65 percent of the vote, reject the decision
of the Constitutional Court and call me a bandit and Mongol-Tatar,
what kind of a dialogue can we have?" he said.
Sarkisian further defended the Armenian authorities’ tough response
to Ter-Petrosian’s post-election demonstrations in Yerevan, saying
that they did "everything possible" to avoid the loss of life on
March 1. He claimed that security forces never intended to disperse
more than 2,000 Ter-Petrosian supporters camped in the city’s Liberty
Square and only wanted to search for weapons allegedly hoarded there.
He said they used force only after meeting fierce resistance from
the protesters.
The break-up of the Liberty Square sit-in led tens of thousands of
opposition supporters to re-assemble and barricade themselves in
another location in the city center later on March 1. At least seven
of them were killed in ensued clashes with riot police armed with
shields, truncheons, stun grenades and automatic weapons.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
