The sides should be responsible

Member of the ANC-coalition dialogue, coalition representative Gagik MInasyan is convinced that if the dialogue stops, it will mean that both the opposition and the coalition have not treated the issue with due responsibility.

– Recently an ANC representative accused you of breaking the agreement, do you agree, was the accusation appropriate?
– Certainly, no and I am happy that I am offered the opportunity to refer to that through your newspaper. If you read the message carefully that Mr. Zurabyan has presented, moreover, he did not only read, but he had written that with his own hand, there were two notions there. First, we had discussed only one issue and it was the issue of August 9 events. And second, we had agreed that there would be no commentary on the issue discussed. When a journalist asks me, have you discussed this issue, and it is not the issue we have agreed on, certainly, I can only answer, no. I cannot answer, yes, because we have a statement that Mr. Zurabyan has voiced, which reads what issue we have discussed. I cannot also say that I will not answer that question of the journalist, because we have no agreement on not answering that very question and our agreements do not refer to the issues discussed, but referred to the content of the issue discussed. Therefore, the only thing I could do was to say “no” without disrupting the statement made. Which I did.
Unfortunately, some people have not understood… I don’t know to say or not to say… period.
– When the dialogue agenda was confirmed with two well-known issues, it seemed that it was obvious what would be discussed, however, the ANC presented an 85-page document, it was followed by the 130-page one prepared by the coalition (here Mr. Minasyan interrupted me and considered necessary to mention that the document they had written was not 130-page, but 131-page one; and I made a joke whether that number had been equated to the number of the NA MPs), do those huge documents correspond to the logic of the agenda confirmed?
– Undoubtedly, certainly, basically if we have the first issue of the agenda, then each side has to put forward its notions of that issue and our colleagues from the ANC put forward their notions by that document. There certainly are arguable points and it couldn’t be otherwise, because if there had been none, the conclusion would have been the thing they presented as an ultimatum.
We, on the other hand, put forward other notions of those same issues in our document. There are also facts that our colleagues presented not in the way they actually are; we also put forward our notions of those facts. The most important thing is that when these two documents are made public, every man can read those two documents and make his own conclusions about the agenda. However, I think we will have the opportunity to discuss all the important points, in order that everything may be clearer for both the sides and the public. This is the main goal of the dialogue. We have different points of view on the same phenomenon and we have to explain to each other the basis of our viewpoints.
– Probably the dialogue will not stop.
– If it stops, it will mean that we, both the ANC and the coalition, do not treat the issue with due responsibility, which should be solved, and that issue is really a very important one. We have initiated a thing that nobody has initiated on the Post-Soviet territory, but in the West it is a standard of the political life and we have to do whatever it takes, in order that it may become a standard for us too. It is obvious that all the problems will not be solved by that, but this is also an attribute that makes the political atmosphere, in which we all are, more educated.
– You seem to have confirmed just now the claims that this dialogue is in the interest of both sides.
– When one asks whether this dialogue is in the interest of both sides; I have the only answer, of course, it is, but because it is in our society interest. The basis of the interest of the parties is the society interest.