While he considers important restoration of Armenia’s leadership in the region.
“Levon Ter-Petrosyan is the most salient and influential politician and will continue being in the coming decade”, – former RA Foreign Minister Vahan Papazyan thinks. What results may we expect from the First President’s nomination? “There is already a very positive result, people’s political consciousness rises, dead or killed political life become active, and the public is interested in serious and important problems of our country and their possible solutions. So the process is very positive in my opinion”, – our interlocutor thinks. He also added: “There is a big problem; there are no places for public discussions besides several newspapers and meetings, because the authority, choosing the soviet methodology, forbids the possibility of equal conditions on TV and broadcast various “garbage” instead.
Vahan Papazyan also doesn’t understand and is surprised at Robert Kocharyan’s nervous replies to Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s nomination. In Mr. Papazyan’s opinion, the reason is that Ter-Petrosyan’s nomination was unexpected for both Kocharyan and the authority. “But it might a psychological problem lasted 2-3 hours and shouldn’t be continued after, but it is still on which means that there are serious problems regarding his successor.” In answer to the opinion that Levon Ter-Petrosyan has no resource to win, our interlocutor observes in the following way: “If you mean material resources, Levon Ter-Petrosyan can’t be considered as a dangerous competitor. The point is that what kind of public support does the first president have? If he gets a wide public support, the rest of issues become secondary. Undoubtedly the public consciousness will grow and the number of his adherents will grow as well. Certainly the anti-propaganda will also rise and all possible legal and illegal methods will be used and new kind of “brain laundry” will appear. But clever people won’t allow it”.
In answer to our question which expectations does Mr. Papazyan have himself from Mr. Ter-Petrosyan’s return, he said: “My expectations connect with the restoration of political thought in Armenia.”
Levon Ter-Petrosyan declared in the mass meeting on October 26 that the next president of Armenia is obliged to settle the NK conflict. Since our interlocutor has led the Foreign Ministry and is aware of the conflict, we were interested whether the situation is urgent. “The situation is anxious indeed. The point is not diplomacy at this moment, it is necessary to restore the position of Armenia and involve NKR in the negotiations. It won’t be easy to become the leader of our region again. But it is possible. Levon Ter-Petrosyan allude in his speech that we should solve our internal problems first of all, I agree with him. Only powerful Armenia is capable to achieve a positive diplomatic solution in NK conflict”.