WikiLeaks-Armenia No 54
2007-04-26
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 YEREVAN 000522
ITH SIXTEEN DAYS LEFT, WE TAKE SOME POINTS TO THE PRESIDENT
Classified By: CDA A.F. Godfrey, reasons 1.4 (b,d)
¶1. (C) SUMMARY: We called on President Kocharian to deliver some messages for the final stage of the pre-election campaign. We urged him to galvanize prosecutors against election-related fraud. We also protested sharply the apparent clandestine taping, and subsequent publishing, of a British diplomat’s conversation with opposition figure Artur Baghdassarian (Ref A). The president fenced with us at some length over these points, but did agree to make a public statement that election fraud would not go unpunished. Kocharian complained bitterly about both Baghdassarian and the British DCM for their role in the conflict — evading our repeated point that the content of the recorded conversation was irrelevant to us; it was the fact of clandestine surveillance and seemingly politically-motivated release of the sensitive material that greatly concerned us. We also took the opportunity to explain to Kocharian, after we deliberated so long with the GOAM [Government of Armenia] to change the Human Rights Report’s characterization of Nagorno-Karabakh, why we had abruptly changed in back again. In the wake of our tough political conversation, Kocharian swallowed this last news with reasonable humor. END SUMMARY
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PRE-ELECTION REPORT CARD
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¶2. (C) The CDA sought a meeting with the President April 26, accompanied by Acting DCM/USAID Director and pol/econ chief, to review the political situation, with roughly two weeks to go until May 12 parliamentary elections. CDA shared with Kocharian his impression of the pre-election period today, which he assessed as a cautiously good news story. He highlighted freedom of assembly, opposition media access, and work on the voters’ registry as areas that seem to us to have shown a marked improvement since the 2003 elections. The CDA noted that some areas require additional work for the future, but that this must come after we get past the current election cycle. Specifically, he mentioned the nearly 500,000 voters (presumably mostly emigrants) who appear on the voters’ registry but do not appear in other GOAM databases. The CDA said that while the OSCE Election Observer Mission (EOM) will undoubtedly mention this in its assessments, we would not make any public mention of this issue until after the election, for fear of unhelpfully undermining public confidence in the polls. He noted that fixing this problem would require some legislative and/or regulatory modifications, and that discussions were ongoing between our technical experts and GOAM officials about this.
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THE BLACK MARK: SECRET TAPING OF OPPOSITION/DIPLOMAT
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¶3. (C) CDA commented that the most troublesome thing to arise so far on the election scene was this appalling case of a private conversation, in February, between the British DCM and Orinats Yerkir party leader Artur Baghdassarian apparently being clandestinely recorded, and then published in the newspaper April 21. This looked suspiciously like intelligence service interference in the political campaign, and would be seen as a black mark by all international observers. CDA emphasized that the content of the conversation was irrelevant to the principle that free societies do not tolerate the secret eavesdropping on politicians. CDA noted that he had spoken with PM Serzh Sargsian about it, and urged the prime minister publicly to condemn the episode. He also reminded the president of the March incident (Ref B) in which the NSS had called in a journalist for questioning about his political writings; another worrisome example of improper security service involvement in politics.
¶4. (S) Kocharian pushed back hard against this criticism. He complained about both Baghdassarian and the British DCM. He said that the British DCM had held numerous meetings over a period of months with various opposition figures, the content of which was inappropriate for a diplomat and amounted to “political intrigue.” Spreading rumor and inciting opposition to the authorities seemed more like the work of intelligence operatives, not diplomats, Kocharian said. The British DCM had been encouraging to opposition leader in their efforts to band together and plot potential uprisings. He mentioned specifically a conversation that the same Briton had held with deputy parliament speaker Vahan Hovhanessian (ARF-Dashnaksutyun party), that had so troubled Hovhanessian he had felt the need immediately to report it to the president. CDA pointed out that it is sometimes the job of a diplomat to ask provocative questions, and this could be misunderstood. He reiterated that in any case, we and the international community did not care about the content of the conversation, the fact of covert taping was a serious concern and a blemish on Armenia’s pre-election record.
¶5. (S) Kocharian went on to blast Artur Baghdassarian. Asking us to stop notetaking and abortively moving to send his own staffers from the room, Kocharian said that Baghdassarian had three times called on him at his residence since the first of the year, asking about whether Kocharian woudl be willing to allow Orinats Yerkir to rejoin the governing coalition after the elections. Kocharian had said that if Baghdassarian’s public rhetoric during the campaign stayed within reasonable limits, he was prepared to allow OY back into the governing coalition. Believing he effectively had a deal with the OY leader, Kocharian was angered to learn that the very same month he had made this tentative commitment to Baghdassarian (February 2007), Baghdassarian was scheming with the British Embassy to blacken Armenia’s reputation over the conduct of elections, and urging European states to condemn the elections as unfair. We renewed out basic point, but the president was not taking it on board.
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GOING AFTER ELECTION FRAUD
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¶6. (C) CDA noted that President Kocharian had asked EUR/ACE Coordinator Tom Adams, in November 2006, for prosecutorial training on election fraud, and that we had provided an excellent month-long program in early 2007 as a direct response. He reported that the Prosecutor General’s office had seemingly been delighted with the training and U.S. study tour, but now was giving us all kinds of excuses for why it could not be more aggressive and forward-leaning on looking into publicized complaints about fraud. CDA asked Kocharian to speak to the PG’s office about taking a more activist posture. Kocharian temporized that this was a tricky issue. The GOAM had been many times criticized in past years for an over-active procuracy, which international observers felt was over-aggressive and politically selective. The law specified what conditions should be met before prosecutors could open an election fraud case, and he could not ask the prosecutors to do otherwise. He noted that the public associated the procuracy and the police organs with the president, and if he ordered them to go out and sniff around based only on media reports, there would be an immediate backlash from opposition parties and international human rights observers, accusing the GOAM of politically-motivated abuse of the procuracy. The CDA asked the president at least to make a strong public statement that election fraud would not be tolerated. The president agreed, while muttering that he did not like to make statements that he could not or did not intend to back up, and his powers vis-a-vis the procuracy on election fraud were not robust.
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HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT CHANGES
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¶7. (C) The CDA explained that, while it was somewhat embarassing to us after our many discussions with the GOAM about revising the Nagorno Karabakh language in the 2006 human right report, that we had been forced to change the language back to the original text, which had been objectionable to Armenia. He explained that, upon reflection, it had been determined that it was inappropriate to make any revision to the HRR text after the report had been formally submitted to Congress, and accordingly the original published language had been restored. Kocharian needled us briefly about this, but then laughed and seemed to dismiss the matter.
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COMMENT
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¶8. (C) This was a challenging, though not hostile, meeting. President Kocharian can be adept at verbal judo when he does not want to take a message on board, and he showed his skill during this meeting. The president’s comments about Baghdissarian reveal an aspect of his character we have noticed in the past. When he believes he has made a deal with someone, if he later believes that the other party has betrayed the bargain, than all bets are off. He does not easily forgive such a transgression.
¶9. (C) The Human Rights Report language is an issue that has exercised the foreign minister far more than the president. Despite the president’s mild initial reaction, we expect stormier waters may lie ahead, especially if there is conspicuous chest-thumping from Baku to the effect that they “beat” Armenia in Washington on this issue.
GODFREY
