Tweet
OSCE ENVOY VISITS ARMENIA AFTER RIOTS KILL EIGHT
By James Kilner
Reuters
March 3 2008
UK
YEREVAN, March 3 (Reuters) - A European envoy met Armenia's government
and opposition on Monday in a hastily organised mission to defuse
a standoff that has boiled over into riots in which eight people
were killed.
Soldiers patrol Yerevan's streets after President Robert Kocharyan
imposed emergency laws during Saturday's clashes between police and
protesters who say his ally, Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan, rigged
last month's presidential election.
Heikki Talvitie, a special envoy for the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), flew into Yerevan on Sunday night
and met Kocharyan and Sarksyan for talks that resumed on Monday.
Armenia is a country of around 3.2 million people on the edge of the
Caucasus -- an oil transit route to Europe from the Caspian Sea where
the United States and Russia battle for influence.
Neither side has shown any willingness to back down, with opposition
leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan pledging to continue
protests and Sarksyan promising to punish trouble makers.
"Organisers of disturbances will answer before the law, history and
generations," Sarksyan said in a statement after meeting Talvitie.
Witnesses saw police fire tracer rounds above the heads of protesters
and lob teargas into the crowd. Protesters armed with metal bars and
petrol bombs torched cars and looted shops in the worst violence in
the ex-Soviet state since 1998.
The 20-day emergency laws ban public meetings and restrict media
reporting. Although armoured personnel carriers guard the main square,
traffic has returned to the streets and the shops are open.
"It was very bad on Saturday," Sahak, a 25-year-old unemployed man,
said as he watched workers hammer together a broken metal shelf in
a looted supermarket.
"But we now really hope that is all over."
Kocharyan officially won 53 percent of the vote in the election and
Ter-Petrosyan won 21.5 percent in a vote the OSCE described as flawed
but sufficient for Armenia to fulfil its international obligations.
But a Western diplomat said another OSCE report on the election this
week would be far more critical.
"Since the election there has been a lot more information coming out
of stuffing ballot boxes and bribery," he said.
Kocharyan and Sarksyan have presided over a period of economic growth
although detractors accuse their government of corruption and nepotism.
Ter-Petrosyan was Armenia's first president after it broke away from
the Soviet Union in 1991 and although street demonstrations forced him
to resign in 1998 he is still revered by many who want an alternative
to the current government.
By James Kilner
Reuters
March 3 2008
UK
YEREVAN, March 3 (Reuters) - A European envoy met Armenia's government
and opposition on Monday in a hastily organised mission to defuse
a standoff that has boiled over into riots in which eight people
were killed.
Soldiers patrol Yerevan's streets after President Robert Kocharyan
imposed emergency laws during Saturday's clashes between police and
protesters who say his ally, Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan, rigged
last month's presidential election.
Heikki Talvitie, a special envoy for the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), flew into Yerevan on Sunday night
and met Kocharyan and Sarksyan for talks that resumed on Monday.
Armenia is a country of around 3.2 million people on the edge of the
Caucasus -- an oil transit route to Europe from the Caspian Sea where
the United States and Russia battle for influence.
Neither side has shown any willingness to back down, with opposition
leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan pledging to continue
protests and Sarksyan promising to punish trouble makers.
"Organisers of disturbances will answer before the law, history and
generations," Sarksyan said in a statement after meeting Talvitie.
Witnesses saw police fire tracer rounds above the heads of protesters
and lob teargas into the crowd. Protesters armed with metal bars and
petrol bombs torched cars and looted shops in the worst violence in
the ex-Soviet state since 1998.
The 20-day emergency laws ban public meetings and restrict media
reporting. Although armoured personnel carriers guard the main square,
traffic has returned to the streets and the shops are open.
"It was very bad on Saturday," Sahak, a 25-year-old unemployed man,
said as he watched workers hammer together a broken metal shelf in
a looted supermarket.
"But we now really hope that is all over."
Kocharyan officially won 53 percent of the vote in the election and
Ter-Petrosyan won 21.5 percent in a vote the OSCE described as flawed
but sufficient for Armenia to fulfil its international obligations.
But a Western diplomat said another OSCE report on the election this
week would be far more critical.
"Since the election there has been a lot more information coming out
of stuffing ballot boxes and bribery," he said.
Kocharyan and Sarksyan have presided over a period of economic growth
although detractors accuse their government of corruption and nepotism.
Ter-Petrosyan was Armenia's first president after it broke away from
the Soviet Union in 1991 and although street demonstrations forced him
to resign in 1998 he is still revered by many who want an alternative
to the current government.