Los Angeles Daily News

Armand Arabia puts award in focus
Noted jurist to get Ellis Island medal

By Dennis McCarthy

Thursday, April 22, 2004 – It was their first family portrait together
in America, and they’re posed like the Rockefellers like they’ve got a
million bucks in the bank.

But they have nothing, really just each other. When this picture was
taken in December 1934, the family had been in this country only a few
years, survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

They were living in a tenement on New York City’s Lower East Side not
too far from Ellis Island, where they and tens of thousands of other
immigrant families entered this country, seeking a better life.

At Ellis Island next month, the man shown in an old photo as a baby
sitting on his grandmother’s lap will receive a coveted award the
Ellis Island Medal of Honor given to U.S. citizens who “preserve and
reinforce the value of their heritage, and contribute extraordinary
service to humanity in any field, profession or occupation.”

Former California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian of Van Nuys
will have his name added to the Ellis Island honor roll with those of
presidents, political leaders, sports and entertainment legends, and
successful businessmen and artists from every walk of life.

It’s pretty heady company for the first-born son of immigrants who
lived in a New York City tenement. But he won’t be thinking about any
of that when they put the medal around his neck next month.

He’ll be thinking of the faces in this family portrait and those
missing from the picture.

Judge Arabian has a harrowing family history. His grandfather had been
a leader in the village of Chengeller, Turkey, not far from
Constantinople, now Istanbul. One morning in 1915 the village was
attacked by Turkish soldiers, and the nightmare began, he says.

His grandfather was taken to the center of town, placed against a wall
and executed by a firing squad. His crime? He was Armenian.

“My grandmother was driven from her home with nothing but the dress on
her back,” Arabian says. “Along with others, she and two of her sons
were marched for days until they reached the banks of a swift river.

“A mounted gendarme with bandoleers of ammunition crossing his chest
ordered her to swim across the river or be shot on the spot. Some
soldiers were already killing those who couldn’t make it.

“Holding the hands of her two sons, she faced an impossible dilemma:
She could save the life of one son by swimming across the river with
him, but she would have to leave the other son behind.

“She chose the eldest, 11-year-old Ovanes, my father,” Arabian
said. “Helping each other, they swam across. Left on the riverbank was
4-year-old Oskian standing with his arms outstretched, crying for his
mother and brother.

“He never saw them again. Not a day went by in my grandmother’s life
that she didn’t relive the heartbreak and pain from leaving her
4-year-old son standing on that riverbank crying,” Arabian said.

“Years later, her daughter, Araxi, was rescued from an orphanage in
France.

One of her beautiful orphan playmates, Aghavnie, later became my
mother,” he says, for Ovanes married her.

Aunt Araxi stands over her mother’s right shoulder in the
picture. Arabian’s mother stands alongside his father, a tailor. And,
of course, in the middle sits the matriarch of the family his
grandmother, Soultana, who relived that swim across the river every
day of her life until she died in 1982.

It is in their memory, their honor, that he will lower his head and
accept the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Arabian says. Not for himself
or anything he did but for what they did.

“My father used to say the only country club Armenians belong to is
the one at Ellis Island. It was the only one that accepted them.”

Arabian will visit his ancestors’ graves before he returns home. He
knows it will be an emotional moment as he kneels before their graves
with that medal of honor hanging from his neck.

It says a lot about the greatness and heart of this country that
immigrant families, like his, were invited into the country club at
Ellis Island after fleeing so much heartbreak, poverty, and violence,
Arabian says.

And that, after only a few years in America, they faced the camera
like they were the Rockefellers like they had a million bucks in the
bank.

Dennis McCarthy’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

Dennis McCarthy, (818) 713-3749 [email protected]

Smuggler Caught with Over 2 Kilos of Diamonds
Created: 22.04.2004 11:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:33 MSK
MosNews

Police in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport detained an Armenian citizen
who was trying to smuggle over 2.6 kg of uncut diamonds into Russia,
ITAR-TASS reported, citing the airport police press service.

The suspect, 39, was detained at about 10:30 p.m. Moscow time
Wednesday. During a passenger security check on a flight from
Yerevan, guards discovered that the suspect was wearing a fabric belt
under his jumper. The belt contained 12 plastic bags filled with
precious stones – each diamond’s value was up to two carats. The
overall weight of the stones was 2.65 kilograms.

Specialists are currently establishing the value of the confiscated
diamonds, ITAR-TASS reported.

A criminal investigation has been launched into the illegal
circulation of precious stones and smuggling.

Michigan Armenians mark genocide by Turks

The Associated Press
4/22/04 2:02 AM

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Armenian Americans are preparing to mark the
89th anniversary of a mass murder that helped mark the the 1900s as
the century of genocide.

Before the Nazi slaughtered 6 million Jews, before the Khmer Rouge
killed 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians, before Rwandan Hutus
killed 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, the Armenians of Turkey endured mass
slaughter at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

Armenians say they lost 1.5 million people in 1915-23, during and
after World War I, as Turkish authorities forced them out of eastern
Turkey. Turkey says the death count is inflated and that the deaths
were a result of civil unrest.

But Adolf Hitler cited the killing of the Armenians as a precedent for
his own slaughter of the Jews two decades later.

“Kill without mercy!” the Nazi leader told his military on the eve of
the Holocaust. “Who today remembers the annihilation of the
Armenians?” Southeastern Michigan is home to about 40,000
Armenian-Americans. On Friday, they start a series of events marking
the 89th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., are pushing for a
commemoration of the genocide. He Levin has signed a letter to
President Bush urging him to officially call the deaths a genocide.

The Rev. Daron Stepanian of St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church in
Dearborn recalled the story of what Talat Pashah had declared when the
killing started.

Pashah was the leader of the Young Turks, a group of military officers
who in 1908 staged a coup to overthrow the sultan who ruled the
Ottoman Empire.

“He said they would keep one Armenian in a museum so future
generations would know what an Armenian looked like,” Stepanian told
The Detroit News.

Each year, April 24 is marked as “Martyrs Day” because 400 Armenian
intellectuals were rounded up and killed in Istanbul on April 24,
1915.

Turkey, an ally of Germany and an enemy of czarist Russia in World War
I, announced during the war that Armenians had been, for their own
safety, evacuated to strategic hamlets so they would not be caught
between Turkey and Russia.

In reality, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were marched into the
Syrian desert to die of thirst, exposure, starvation and disease.

“The world should care,” Stepanian said. “Hitler himself said, `Who
remembers the Armenians?’ Acknowledgement must come.”

“Righteous people have a moral imperative not to let the (Armenian)
Genocide or the Holocaust go unremembered and unmourned,” University
of Michigan-Dearborn historian Dennis R. Papazian wrote in an opinion
column in the Detroit Free Press. “To do so would be to make us less
human and to encourage the repetition of evil.”

Canada Lawmakers Recognize Armenian Genocide

RFE/RL Feature Article

22 April 2004 — Canada’s parliament yesterday backed a motion declaring
that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians during World War I.

Yesterday’s vote in the House of Commons was 153 “for” and 68 “against.”

Armenians say a 1915-23 campaign to drive them out of eastern Turkey
amounted to genocide and some 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Turks
officially deny this, saying the Armenians were among the many victims
of a partisan war during World War I.

Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham had urged legislators not to
aggravate NATO ally Turkey by voting in favor of the motion.

After the vote, Graham issued a statement saying the motion will not
alter the official Canadian government position that while the events in
question at the start of the 20th century were a tragedy, they did not
constitute genocide.

A backer of the motion and a member of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party,
Sarkis Assadourian, dismissed Foreign Ministry warnings of a possible
Turkish backlash.

A counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa, Fazli Corman, had told the
Reuters news agency that bilateral relations would “suffer” if the
motion were adopted.

The French parliament passed a similar motion in 2001.

(RFE/RL and wire reports)

Bloomberg
April 22 2004

Sony, Two Buyout Firms May Acquire MGM for $5 Bln, People Say

April 21 (Bloomberg) — Sony Corp., the world’s second- biggest
consumer-electronics maker, and two buyout firms may buy film studio
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. for $5 billion, people familiar with the
matter said.

Sony, Texas Pacific Group and Providence Equity Partners would invest
$1.5 billion cash and finance the rest of the transaction with debt,
the people said. Tokyo-based Sony already owns Sony Pictures
Entertainment, which includes the Columbia Pictures studio.

A sale would double the size of Sony’s film library to about 8,000
films, adding MGM titles including James Bond films. Sony would
augment its 85,000 hour-archive of television programs with 10,000
MGM TV episodes including “The Outer Limits.” By gaining those
assets, Sony also would acquire MGM’s cash flow, which an analyst
said may reach $150 million to $200 million this year.

“This is a good thing for Sony,” said Mark Greenberg, manager of
the $938 million Invesco Leisure Fund, which holds more than 750,000
MGM shares. “The value of MGM is it’s the largest post-World War II
library in Hollywood. It’s logical.”

MGM issued a statement saying it’s still proposing that its board
approve plans for a one-time dividend of $8 per share.

A purchase would mark the third time billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who
controls 74 percent of MGM, has sold the studio. Kerkorian tried
unsuccessfully to merge his studio with Sony Pictures in 2001.

Price Tag

A $5 billion price tag implies a cost per share of $21, Lehman
Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente said in an interview. They closed
at $17.65 on Tuesday, the day before news of the talks became public.

“Our view is that fair value is $19 a share, said DiClemente, who
rates the shares “equal weight” and doesn’t own them. “If Kirk
gets $21, in our view, that would be a Hollywood ending for MGM.”

MGM shares rose $2.10, or 12 percent, to a 52-week high of $19.75 in
New York Stock Exchange composite trading today after Reuters
reported that MGM was in talks with Sony. The shares have gained 16
percent this year.

Andrew Cole, a Providence spokesman, and Owen Blicksilver, a Texas
Pacific Group spokesman, declined to comment. MGM spokesman David
Bloom also declined to comment.

“It’s our policy not to comment on rumors,” said Kei Sakaguchi, a
spokesman for Sony in Tokyo.

Media

Large media companies are acquiring assets to gain content such as
films, and the means to distribute them. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
in December paid $6.6 billion for a controlling interest in the
DirecTV satellite television service to gain a share of the U.S.
pay-television market.

General Electric Co.’s NBC said yesterday that the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission approved its planned $14 billion purchase of Vivendi
Universal SA’s U.S. entertainment assets.

MGM last year had a loss of $161.8 million on sales of $1.88 billion.
MGM will announce first-quarter financial results next week on April
29.

For the year ended March 31, Sony earned $813 million (88 billion
yen) from sales of $68.5 billion. Operating income at Sony’s film
business dropped 82 percent to 5.6 billion yen in the quarter ended
Dec. 31, the most recent period for which figures are available,
because of a lack of hit titles.

Sony Pictures, in Culver City, California, already owns the former
Columbia and TriStar studios. Led by Chairman and Chief Executive
Michael Lynton, it has produced movies “Hellboy” and “50 First
Dates” this year, putting it in second place in box- office sales
with $372.5 million.

Newmarket Films, the distributor of “The Passion of the Christ,” is
No. 1 with ticket sales of $394.6 million.

MGM, founded in 1924, owns the “Rocky” and “Pink Panther” films,
19 Woody Allen films, as well as “West Side Story” and “Rain
Man.”

“There’s not much else out there that has a positive free cash flow
like MGM does,” DiClemente said.

Leveraged Buyout

Kerkorian’s company doesn’t own a traditional Hollywood studio lot,
and instead rents studio space and sound stages. The company has a
long-term lease for the MGM Tower in Century City, about 10 miles
west of downtown Los Angeles. The company has a facility in Santa
Monica where it houses the home entertainment unit.

In a leveraged buyout, a firm acquires a company using investor cash
in combination with debt taken out on the acquired company’s books.
The buyout firm then tries to pay down the debt and sell the company
at a profit in three to five years.

Texas Pacific, started in 1993 by David Bonderman, a former aide to
the billionaire Bass family of Texas, raised a $5.3 billion takeover
fund last year, TPG Partners IV LP.

The firm has a history of investing in brand names in need of
resuscitation, including loss-ridden airlines such as Continental
Airlines Inc. and burger chain Burger King.

Providence

Providence Equity, named for the Rhode Island city where it is based,
invests in communications and media companies and was started in
1991. The firm is currently investing its $2.8 billion Providence
Equity Partners IV.

Providence almost doubled its money on a stake in Irish telephone
company Eircom Ltd. after an initial public offering this year. Other
stakes include cable channel Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network
LLC.

Buyout firms increased their purchases 25 percent to a record $127
billion worldwide in 2003 as they used more than $100 billion of
uninvested capital in combination with the lowest interest rates in
40 years to make purchases from corporations shedding divisions.

Such purchases have continued this year, with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
& Co. yesterday announcing plans to buy satellite broadcast company
PanAmSat Corp. for $4.3 billion from Murdoch’s DirecTV Group Inc.

Kerkorian

Kerkorian is the president and chief executive of closely held Las
Vegas-based Tracinda Corp. and is ranked as the 65th wealthiest
person with $6 billion in net worth, according to Forbes magazine.

The son of an Armenian immigrant rancher in California’s San Joaquin
Valley, Kerkorian has owned the MGM film studio three times since he
first bought it in 1970. Under Kerkorian, the company built the MGM
Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 1973. The casino unit was spun off into a
separate company in 1980.

Kerkorian sold the studio to Ted Turner in 1986 and then bought it
back, leaving the pre-1948 library with Turner. Kerkorian later sold
the part of the studio he retained to Italian financier Giancarlo
Parretti, who lost it to Credit Lyonnais after defaulting on bank
loans.

Kerkorian bought it a third time in 1996 with MGM Inc. Chairman Frank
Mancuso for $1.3 billion in cash, outbidding the Dutch entertainment
company PolyGram NV.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Dan Lonkevich in New York at [email protected]; Michael White
in Los Angeles at [email protected].

To contact the editor of this story:
Greg Baumann at [email protected].

Los Angeles Times
April 22 2004

As Protests Flag, Armenia’s President Seems to Prevail

Foes accuse Robert Kocharyan of vote fraud and rights abuses, but he
cites economic growth.
By David Holley, Times Staff Writer

MOSCOW – Armenian President Robert Kocharyan’s government appears to
have won at least a tactical victory in deflating recent protests and
defending his hold on office after an election last year that his
opponents claim was rigged.

A string of demonstrations seeking Kocharyan’s ouster began early
this month, and thousands of protesters gathered again in Yerevan,
the capital, Wednesday evening to press their demands, Russian news
agency Interfax reported.

But what organizers had billed in advance as a “decisive” protest
early last week ended with a predawn crackdown, as baton-swinging
police backed by water cannons cleared a crowd from the avenue
leading to the presidential palace. About 30 people were reported
injured, and the opposition was incensed. But subsequent rallies had
less steam rather than more.

Opposition leaders remained defiant and were trying to turn the
president’s tough tactics against him.

“We want the world to know that the opposition is very far from being
subdued and broken,” Stepan Demirchyan, who lost to Kocharyan in last
year’s election and is a leader of the protests, said late last week
in a telephone interview from Yerevan. “We are not flat on our back,
and we are ready to keep on fighting. And we will make sure we see
this struggle of ours through to a victorious end.”

Still, things have not been going according to plan for those in
Armenia who hoped to imitate the success of the opposition in
neighboring Georgia, where a nonviolent revolution forced President
Eduard A. Shevardnadze from office in November.

That uprising has variously been dubbed a “velvet revolution,” after
Czechoslovakia’s peaceful overthrow of communism, or the “rose
revolution,” after the single long-stemmed rose that a key protest
leader – now President Mikheil Saakashvili – carried as demonstrators
took over Georgia’s parliament.

Kocharyan himself has drawn the comparison and emphasized his
confidence that the scenario will not be repeated.

“The Armenian opposition, encouraged by the Georgian ‘velvet
revolution,’ has clearly decided that the situation in the country
will enable them to achieve the same outcome,” Kocharyan told Russian
state television. “But the situation cannot be compared.”

Kocharyan cited strong economic growth in recent years as one reason
he cannot be pushed out, and said another is that his administration
is far stronger than was Shevardnadze’s.

He also downplayed the controversy over the April 13 police crackdown
on protesters.

“The country has carried on in the past and will continue to do so,”
he said.

The opposition’s drive against Kocharyan is rooted in complaints he
failed to win a legitimate victory in the March presidential election
last year, despite official results showing him taking 67% to
Demirchyan’s 33%. Last April, Armenia’s Constitutional Court
confirmed the vote but suggested a referendum within a year to gauge
confidence in the nation’s leaders.

Kocharyan’s government rejected the idea. The recent protests have
been timed to the expiration of the one-year period.

Immediately after last year’s election, Peter Eicher, head of the
observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, said there were “serious problems and irregularities” in the
vote, but he declined to say whether they were enough to change the
result. He said there was intimidation, widespread ballot-box
stuffing and discrepancies at a large number of polling stations.

David Petrosyan, a commentator with independent news agency Noyan
Tapan, said there was sufficient anger at the president and his
policies that Kocharyan had good reason to fear holding a referendum.

But Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for
Strategic and International Studies, a Tbilisi think tank, said there
did not appear to be “a revolutionary situation” in Armenia.

“Mr. Kocharyan has more control of his state than Mr. Shevardnadze
did,” Rondeli said. “Mr. Shevardnadze was already aging, he was
losing control.”

Another factor is Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan over the
disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Rondeli said. “Armenia is at
war, in reality, and many people there are afraid if political
destabilization happens it will be disastrous for Armenia,” he said.

But Kocharyan’s tough stance on the protests has failed to solve any
real problems, said Petrosyan, the commentator.

“Armenia resembles a powder keg today, and whether or when it
explodes will depend solely on who decides to hold a lighted match to
it first,” he said. “Something is bound to happen one way or another.
For now, everything is up in the air. Everyone is waiting and getting
ready for the final showdown.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this
report.

Winnipeg Sun, Canada
April 22 2004

News Briefs column

By SUN NEWS SERVICES

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE NOTED

OTTAWA — Canada became one of the few countries to formally
recognize the genocide of Armenian Turks during the First World War
in a strongly worded motion adopted 153-68 in the House of Commons
yesterday.

Government members were discouraged from voting for the motion, which
is sure to anger a Turkish government that has never recognized the
massacre of 1.5 million Armenians starting in 1915.

Following a charged debate at their weekly closed-door caucus
meeting, Liberal backbenchers voted massively in favour while the
party’s cabinet contingent rejected the Bloc Quebecois motion.

Seattle Times, WA
April 22 2004

Thousands march to demand Armenian president resign

YEREVAN, Armenia – More than 10,000 demonstrators marched yesterday
to demand the resignation of Armenian President Robert Kocharyan,
whom they accuse of rigging his re-election last year, and to seek a
national referendum on his administration.

Kocharyan dismisses any notion of a “rose revolution” like the one
that forced the resignation last year of veteran leader Eduard
Shevardnadze in ex-Soviet Georgia to the north.

The president says Armenia, unlike Georgia, has a more solid economy
with authorities enjoying broader support.

M.F.A.: We Extremely Regretted Erection Of A Monument In Poland Defaming Our
Nation
Anadolu Agency:
4/21/2004

ANKARA – Turkey has expressed its extreme regret over erection of a
monument in yard of a Catholic church in Poland on which it was
written that Turks had committed genocide against Armenians.

Releasing a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said on
Wednesday, ”a monument was erected in yard of a Catholic church in
Krakov city of Poland on April 17, 2004. There is an inscription on
the monument writing that Armenians had been exposed to genocide in
Turkey in 1915.”

”Although we have learnt that Polish government rejected the
inscription on the monument, we extremely regretted erection of such a
monument in Poland defaming our nation since we have always supported
Poland in its most difficult periods,” the MFA stressed.

Expressing Turkey’s concerns about a church’s being used as a tool of
an understanding of history based of distorted data, and of obsessions
of some marginal groups, the MFA emphasized, ”all countries should
remember that if all religious faiths and their adherents are purified
from prejudices and feelings of hatred, we can succeed in our efforts
to provide inter-religious dialogue.”

”Otherwise, we will face the jeopardy of inciting intolerance and
giving rise to social turmoil. The current sensitive period entails
everyone, especially religious officials, to be responsible and
careful in all steps to be taken,” the MFA added.

Armenian premier rules out talks with opposition on president’s resignation

Haykakan Zhamanak, Yerevan
20 Apr 04

If the opposition wants to change the authorities, it should wait for
the 2008 presidential elections, Armenian Prime Minister Andranik
Markaryan has said in an interview with Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper.
Commenting on possible dialogue with the opposition, the prime
minister said that their major demand was the president’s resignation,
which under no circumstances could be a subject of negotiations.
Markaryan did not rule out that opposition protests could be
orchestrated from abroad in order to weaken the Armenian government
and create a puppet state that would be easy to manipulate. The prime
minister also said that President Robert Kocharyan was not planning a
government reshuffle in order to relieve the tension. The following is
the text of Naira Zograbyan report by Armenian newspaper Haykakan
Zhamanak on 20 April headlined “Be ready for the 2008 elections”;
subheadings inserted editorially:

Arrests at opposition demo “technical fault”

[Haykakan Zhamanak correspondent] Mr Prime Minister, police carried out
an operation to round up demonstrators on Bagramyan Street on 13
April, which is forbidden by international conventions. Moreover, they
also used barbed wire that is not allowed either to be used against
peaceful demonstrators. Why was a corridor not provided for the
demonstrators to leave?

[Andranik Markaryan] Barbed wire is used in this kind of operations in
all countries. An area cannot be cordoned off with barbed wire, and
this was not applied. As for the operation to round up people, it was
only a technical fault. Simply, at that moment the police could not
strictly follow their orders. Of course, a corridor should have been
left for the people to leave. This problem was discussed, and as I
already said, it was not a well-considered step, but a technical
fault, and I am sorry for that.

As for the events of 13 April, the authorities did not keep their
actions in secret and informed opposition representatives of them at
different meetings. But the opposition did this in order to use this
in the future [sentence as received]. Today, the opposition is trying
to make not the reasons but the consequences of 13 April a subject of
talks with the coalition [government].

Incidentally, they will continue on this path to reach their political
ambitions, using discontent and feelings of a group of people to
settle their own problems. One must not use a group of people to
settle this kind of problems, when one knows very well from the very
beginning that this is a hopeless step. I would call on the people not
to allow them to use themselves to settle some people’s problems.

Protests orchestrated from abroad

[Correspondent] According to a pro-government force, today certain
forces from outside are implementing their business programmes, using
the opposition. Do you also think that the opposition actions are
being orchestrated from abroad?

[Markaryan] Yes, there are certain political forces which realize very
well that they cannot achieve results in this way, but nevertheless
are creating pre-conditions to disturb stability in the country and
damage Armenia’s authority in the world. The programme is clear: they
have an objective to make the authorities of Armenia less resistible
to the problems of the country. In particular, they can offer a
[settlement] package on the Karabakh issue, which we shall not agree
to, but we shall see how the opposition will immediately become active
in this case. They will immediately recall arrests, make speeches and
statements at the Council of Europe and different international
instances, up to demanding that Armenia’s membership of the Council of
Europe be revoked. Whereas all of us understand what expelling the
country from the Council of Europe means. That means putting the
country into a political blockade, threatening investment, closing
various programmes of international organizations. If not the [UN]
blue helmets, helmets of other colour or different international
organizations will then start acting against the authorities of
Armenia, because it will be then easier for them to have a puppet
state.

Talks on president’s resignation ruled out

[Correspondent] Mr Prime Minister, nevertheless the current situation
needs to be settled. The opposition believes that the coalition’s
statement calling for a dialogue is not serious. It says that the
coalition does not decide anything and that they can negotiate only
with the president or [Defence Minister] Serzh Sarkisyan.

[Markaryan] If they want to negotiate with the coalition the
president’s resignation, then we have nothing to negotiate with
them. But I have a better opinion about our state and political field
in order to say that parties decide nothing and Serzh Sarkisyan and
the president decide everything. What does the opposition want? Does
it want Serzh and the president to decide if they will tender their
resignation or not? Does it want to negotiate with the president of
the country and the defence minister the handover of power to them?

By the way, during my talks with opposition leaders, one of their main
problems was how I should persuade the president to hand power over to
the opposition without shedding blood. And naturally, I did not accept
that. That is, according to their logic, I already agree to the change
of the authorities and the opposition asks me to persuade the
president to resign without a shock. However, today the position of
the Republican Party of Armenia [RPA] and my own position is as firm
as it was during the presidential elections of 2003.

[Correspondent] Nevertheless, today the opposition seems to be taking
a step back saying that it is ready to have a dialogue if all those
who were arrested are released and guarantees are given that there
will not be new arrests. Can you give such guarantees to the
opposition?

[Markaryan] If they stop expressing their demands in the form of
demonstrations, which means there will be no new arrests, in that
case, yes, I can describe this as a change in the political situation
and will submit that problem to the president. That is, let us outline
the rules of the game: they stop acting in the same way, and we can
negotiate and find positive solutions to the consequences of the
previous actions.

[Correspondent] But the opposition will hardly stop demonstrations,
especially as [Anrapetutyun Party leader] Aram Zavenovich Sarkisyan
has resolutely announced that [President Robert] Kocharyan will not
live a comfortable life in this country.

[Markaryan] I do not think that Aram Sarkisyan’s bragging will have
many consequences for our state and that the authorities will be
frightened of my friend Aram’s words.

Opposition should wait for presidential polls

[Correspondent] What do you think is the way out of the current
situation?

[Markaryan] The opposition should strengthen its structures and be
prepared to the presidential elections of 2008. They will not gain
anything by means of demonstrations and making emotional demands. And
I think that the government which takes those demands into account
gives up on the future of the country.

Today we are solving not the problems of Kocharyan or the government
and the coalition or Aram Sarkisyan and [opposition Justice bloc
leader] Stepan Demirchyan, but the problem of our state’s future
development. Are we not going to make a coup a tradition because of
some displeased political forces? A coup is a coup, be it a
constitutional or armed one, and the state, the president, the
executive authorities and the parliament will all prevent a coup in
the country.

The opposition speaks of democracy, national interests and, at the
same time, ignores all these. How can democracy of a minority be
accepted while democracy of a majority is rejected, the interests of a
minority are accepted while the interests of a majority are not? We
have found ourselves in an absurd situation: 20-25 people tell 80
people that they will come to the parliament only if the majority
agrees to their demands. In what country can 20 people blackmail the
majority?

No government reshuffle planned

[Correspondent] The Russian press, as well as the Western press, says
that a change of the authorities is unavoidable in Armenia.

[Markaryan] This is not the first time the foreign press has published
this analysis. Naturally, I do not have to feel bad that Ivanov,
Sidorov or Jack wrote something about my country. Let them first deal
with the problems of their own country, sitting in Paris or Moscow,
they are not the persons to teach us how democracy should look like.

[Correspondent] Mr Prime Minister, some analysts say that in order to
ease tension, the president could replace the prime minister and the
government. The dissolution of the National Assembly is not ruled out
either. Do you think this is possible?

[Markaryan] I do not think that the president will take such actions
because these actions will not promote a solution to the problems
raised by the opposition. First, I should know and the president
should explain what problems could be settled by means of such
steps. If he says that a political problem will be settled and
sacrifices the RPA’s interests to the steps suggested by Pogos-Petros
[somebody else], in that case I shall say thank you and join the
opposition. Naturally, not because of the illegitimate president. We
can give relevant explanations of our steps and undertake certain
actions within the framework of the constitution. According to the
same logic, I rule out the dissolution of the National Assembly
because this will be the second step in the president’s resignation.