Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian and his opposition allies remaining at
large have met to discuss their further steps, saying that they will continue to
strive for regime change in Armenia by “legal and democratic means.”

Ter-Petrosian’s office said participants of the weekend meeting, apparently the
first since the violent post-election unrest in Yerevan, “reaffirmed their
determination to fight against the kleptocratic system.”

“All leaders of the [pro-Ter-Petrosian opposition] parties noted that the public
is determined to get rid of the current authorities by legal and democratic
means,” it said in a short statement. No further details were reported.

Ter-Petrosian said last week that he will continue to challenge the official
results of Armenia’s disputed presidential election and plans to resume
demonstrations in the capital after the lifting of the state of emergency
expected. His representatives had already notified the Yerevan mayor’s office of
their intention to hold a rally on March 21, the day after the anticipated end
of emergency rule.

However, municipal authorities banned the planned gathering, saying that it
would pose a “serious threat to the life and health of citizens.” In a written
statement, an aide to Mayor Yervand Zakharian also argued that the last
opposition rally held on March 1 was marred by deadly clashes between
Ter-Petrosian supporters and riot police.

More than one hundred opposition leaders and activists have been arrested on
charges mainly stemming from those clashes which the Armenian authorities call a
coup attempt. Dozens of others have gone into hiding. Many of the detained and
fugitive oppositionists are senior members of opposition parties supporting
Ter-Petrosian, notably the Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh) and
Hanrapetutyun (Republic). According to Ter-Petrosian’s office, most members of
the two parties’ governing boards are now in jail or on the run.

An office spokesman, Armen Khachatrian, told RFE/RL on Monday that dozens of
other, less known, opposition activists in Yerevan and other parts of the
country have been taken to police stations in recent days. He said police
officers are trying to force them to give incriminating testimony against
opposition leaders and to promise not to participate in further Ter-Petrosian
rallies. He said the interrogations are illegal because none of the activists
received written summonses from the police and other law-enforcement agencies.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian and his ally Artur Baghdasarian, who
finished third in the February 19 election, on Monday again defended the use of
force against Ter-Petrosian supporters 1 and blamed the former president for the
resulting casualties. “He radicalized a part of the opposition and guided it
into a standoff with the state, which led to the March 1 riots in which armed
demonstrators confronted police,” they said in a joint article published by “The
Washington Post.”

“Despite recent events, our country is still moving forward,” wrote Sarkisian
and Baghdasarian. “The international community has everything to gain through
supporting a stable, transparent and elected government in Armenia.”

However, the Zharangutyun party of Raffi Hovannisian, the only opposition group
represented in Armenia’s parliament, had a completely different take on the
post-election situation in the country, saying that “the schism between the
Armenian people and its government continues to expand.” In a statement,
Zharangutyun, which endorsed Ter-Petrosian’s presidential bid, said that the
presidential ballot was fraudulent and that Armenians had a legitimate right to
dispute its official results in the streets. It said the March 1 bloodshed
resulted from the break-up of non-stop protests in Yerevan’s Liberty Square
staged by the Ter-Petrosian camp.

“The unconscionability displayed on February 19 and the brutality used to
protect it on March 1 remain unresolved issues,” said the statement. “No state
of emergency, accompanied as it is by an aggressive, one-sided ‘public
information’ vertical which deepens the public divide rather than healing it,
will succeed in securing the collective amnesia of state and society.”