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Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Feb 18 2008
Old scores flare up ahead of Armenian presidential vote
18.02.08 13:53
(dpa) - In the Armenian presidential elections Tuesday, incumbent
Robert Kocharian is widely expected to relinquish power after 10
years at the helm to his preferred successor Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkasian.
But the return of Armenia's first president Levon Ter-Petrosian after
a near decade away from politics has made the race less certain and
brought foreign policy difference to the fore of the campaign.
Kosovo's declaration of independence has raised fears that separatist
movements in the Caucasus region will flare-up harbinging fresh
clashes along Armenia's border with Azerbaijan, where a 1994
ceasefire left the Azeri land of Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian
control.
Ter-Petrosian was forced to cede power to Kocharian in 1998 after a
severe backlash over his conciliatory stance toward the Nagorno-
Karabakh conflict after a six-year war that cost some 60,000 lives.
At a press conference on the last day of campaigning Sunday,
Armenia's former leader underlined that his stance remained
unchanged.
"My position is for the soonest possible resolution of the conflict
based on a compromise and on mutual concessions," Ter- Petrosian told
reporters Sunday.
Kocharian and Sarkisian, dubbed the Karabakh Clan after their roots,
have appeared less ready to compromise.
The dispute has also drawn lines among Armenia's neighbouring states
with Turkey coming down against the small post-Soviet state and
closing its border in protest of Armenia's lobbying for international
recognition as `genocide' of the killings of Armenians under the
Turkish Ottomon empire in 1915.
Facing blockades along two of its borders, landlocked Armenia has
relied on international aid and its strong partnership with Russia,
which holds a military base in the region.
Armenia, strategically located along key transit route from the
oil-rich Caspian and Black Seas, is in a region that has been the
site of a battle for influence between Russia and the United States,
with Georgia's leadership pushing it toward accession with NATO and
energy-rich Azerbaijan figuring in European plans to diversify energy
dependency away from Russia.
However, Armenia's only pipeline, carrying oil from its southern
neighbour Iran, has come under the control of Russian energy giant
Gazprom as part of a deal that hands Russia almost total control over
the small state's energy sector.
Despite the border blockades, Armenia's population of around 3.2
million has seen rapid economic progress in recent years and a
construction boom that has buoyed Prime Minister Sarkisian's
popularity in the upcoming elections.
Currently polling at about 50.7 per cent, Sarkisian needs to pass a
50-per-cent barrier to win in the first round of Tuesday's election.
About 35,000 supporters turned up at Sarkisian's last campaign rally
in the capital Yerevan's main square, holding his party banners
reading Forward Armenia.
Supporter Alvard, a 46 year-old accountant who attended the rally
with her family said Sarkisian had her vote because "look everywhere,
the country is growing."
She pointed to cranes overhanging the square contrasting it with the
"days of Ter-Petrosian" when she organized her life and that of her
two daughters around three hours of electricity a day.
Once a hub of Soviet manufacturing, Armenia was impoverished by the
fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, experiencing chronic power outages,
a situation made bleaker by the war with Azerbaijan.
In a battle pitting Kocharin's preferred successor against his
predecessor, Armenian political analysts say memories of the "dark
years" under Armenia's first president will compete against today's
frustration with perceived corruption and lack of reforms.
Armenia's large diaspora in Europe, mainly in France, and in the
United States put a disproportionate international interest in the
small Caucus state's vote, but there were no clear pro-Western or
pro-Russian divides among the nine candidates ahead of the election.
A visit by Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov with Sarkisian lent
tacit support to the incumbent administration two weeks before the
elections, but Ter-Petrosian was at pains to prove he had been
assured of Moscow's neutrality by presidential favourite Dmitry
Medvedev.
The US, meanwhile, has threatened to withhold 235 million dollars in
aid, while diplomatic relations with the European Union may depend on
the fairness of Tuesday's vote, to be monitored by over 400
international observers.
Feb 18 2008
Old scores flare up ahead of Armenian presidential vote
18.02.08 13:53
(dpa) - In the Armenian presidential elections Tuesday, incumbent
Robert Kocharian is widely expected to relinquish power after 10
years at the helm to his preferred successor Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkasian.
But the return of Armenia's first president Levon Ter-Petrosian after
a near decade away from politics has made the race less certain and
brought foreign policy difference to the fore of the campaign.
Kosovo's declaration of independence has raised fears that separatist
movements in the Caucasus region will flare-up harbinging fresh
clashes along Armenia's border with Azerbaijan, where a 1994
ceasefire left the Azeri land of Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian
control.
Ter-Petrosian was forced to cede power to Kocharian in 1998 after a
severe backlash over his conciliatory stance toward the Nagorno-
Karabakh conflict after a six-year war that cost some 60,000 lives.
At a press conference on the last day of campaigning Sunday,
Armenia's former leader underlined that his stance remained
unchanged.
"My position is for the soonest possible resolution of the conflict
based on a compromise and on mutual concessions," Ter- Petrosian told
reporters Sunday.
Kocharian and Sarkisian, dubbed the Karabakh Clan after their roots,
have appeared less ready to compromise.
The dispute has also drawn lines among Armenia's neighbouring states
with Turkey coming down against the small post-Soviet state and
closing its border in protest of Armenia's lobbying for international
recognition as `genocide' of the killings of Armenians under the
Turkish Ottomon empire in 1915.
Facing blockades along two of its borders, landlocked Armenia has
relied on international aid and its strong partnership with Russia,
which holds a military base in the region.
Armenia, strategically located along key transit route from the
oil-rich Caspian and Black Seas, is in a region that has been the
site of a battle for influence between Russia and the United States,
with Georgia's leadership pushing it toward accession with NATO and
energy-rich Azerbaijan figuring in European plans to diversify energy
dependency away from Russia.
However, Armenia's only pipeline, carrying oil from its southern
neighbour Iran, has come under the control of Russian energy giant
Gazprom as part of a deal that hands Russia almost total control over
the small state's energy sector.
Despite the border blockades, Armenia's population of around 3.2
million has seen rapid economic progress in recent years and a
construction boom that has buoyed Prime Minister Sarkisian's
popularity in the upcoming elections.
Currently polling at about 50.7 per cent, Sarkisian needs to pass a
50-per-cent barrier to win in the first round of Tuesday's election.
About 35,000 supporters turned up at Sarkisian's last campaign rally
in the capital Yerevan's main square, holding his party banners
reading Forward Armenia.
Supporter Alvard, a 46 year-old accountant who attended the rally
with her family said Sarkisian had her vote because "look everywhere,
the country is growing."
She pointed to cranes overhanging the square contrasting it with the
"days of Ter-Petrosian" when she organized her life and that of her
two daughters around three hours of electricity a day.
Once a hub of Soviet manufacturing, Armenia was impoverished by the
fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, experiencing chronic power outages,
a situation made bleaker by the war with Azerbaijan.
In a battle pitting Kocharin's preferred successor against his
predecessor, Armenian political analysts say memories of the "dark
years" under Armenia's first president will compete against today's
frustration with perceived corruption and lack of reforms.
Armenia's large diaspora in Europe, mainly in France, and in the
United States put a disproportionate international interest in the
small Caucus state's vote, but there were no clear pro-Western or
pro-Russian divides among the nine candidates ahead of the election.
A visit by Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov with Sarkisian lent
tacit support to the incumbent administration two weeks before the
elections, but Ter-Petrosian was at pains to prove he had been
assured of Moscow's neutrality by presidential favourite Dmitry
Medvedev.
The US, meanwhile, has threatened to withhold 235 million dollars in
aid, while diplomatic relations with the European Union may depend on
the fairness of Tuesday's vote, to be monitored by over 400
international observers.