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Press Review


“Haykakan Zhamanak” claims that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan will be offered by the mediators to sign a “package of agreements” on Karabakh when they meet in Europe next month. But the paper says that package will be a mere “memorandum of intentions” that will serve as the basis for a future peaceful settlement. “There are now all the grounds to say that the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process has reached its climax and that the international community is preparing to take the decisive step towards the conflict’s resolution.”

“Haykakan Zhamanak” also reports that Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian is less than thrilled by the mediators’ decision to hold another round of “proximity talks” in Frankfurt on April 27. “There is no need for that, as far as I’m concerned,” he is quoted as saying.

According to “Hayots Ashkhar,” Austria’s right-wing Union for the Future party is to push for a parliament resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The party’s parliamentary leader is quoted as saying that a relevant motion will be put to the Austrian parliament soon.

“There is no revolutionary situation [in Armenia],” a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), Levon Mkrtchian, tells “Aravot.” Mkrtchian attributes renewed talk of regime change to the advent of spring which he says has “aroused a revolutionary mood” among some people. “But that doesn’t mean there is a revolutionary situation in Armenia,” he adds.

In an interview with “Hayots Ashkhar,” President Robert Kocharian’s national security adviser, Garnik Isagulian, does not rule out the possibility of Dashnaktsutyun and two other members of the governing coalition supporting different presidential candidates in 2008. “Do not forget that if the pre-election campaign starts early, pre-election energy gets exhausted by the time one reaches the finish line,” he says. “In this sense, I think that some parties will suffer a serious drop in their approval ratings in the upcoming elections.”

Opposition leader Artashes Geghamian, meanwhile, tells “Haykakan Zhamanak” that regime change is a matter of months or even weeks. “It is not accidental that it is the governing parties that have begun a fierce pre-election struggle,” he says. Geghamian says his National Unity Party will hold a conference of its young members which will help to determine “how prepared the youths are for our possible actions in the near future.” “After this consolidation of forces, when our 100 percent readiness becomes evident, we will be able to rally hundreds of thousands of people under our banner,” he adds.

(Armen Zakarian)
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