Ishkhan Saghatelian, an opposition leader, called for such a meeting on September 13 the day after Azerbaijani forces reportedly attacked various sections of Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.
He said former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian, Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian as well as the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II, and other “influential figures” should “gather around a table” and discuss ways of “getting the country out of this situation.”
“There have been meetings for this purpose in different formats, and I hope that there will be a visible result soon,” Saghatelian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday.
Saghatelian is a leading member of the main opposition Hayastan alliance headed by Kocharian. The latter has not yet publicly commented on the possibility of the crisis talks with the two other ex-presidents.
Eduard Sharmazanov, a senior member for Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), made clear that the HHK leader is ready for such a meeting.
“The sovereignty and independence of Armenia has been jeopardized by and because of its current inept rulers,” said Sharmazanov.
There has been no public reaction so far from Ter-Petrosian, who had served as the country’s first president from 1991-1998.
Still, Ter-Petrosian held a rare meeting with Garegin on September 18. He received Arayik Harutiunian, the Nagorno-Karabakh president, in his Yerevan residence two days later.
The three ex-presidents, who have a long history of mutual antagonism, already met in October 2020 during the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Karabakh. They discussed jointly seeking greater international -- and in particular Russian -- support for Armenia. The initiative did not translate into concrete action because of what they described as a lack of cooperation by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Also, in the run-up to the June 2021 parliamentary elections, Ter-Petrosian proposed that the three ex-presidents set up an electoral alliance to oust Pashinian and then immediately retire from politics. Kocharian reportedly rejected the idea.