US Ambassador Invites Seyran Ohanyan and Arthur Vanetsyan for Meeting

The newspaper "Hraparak" writes: "US Ambassador Lynn Tracey requested meetings yesterday with the leaders of two opposition factions in the National Assembly separately to convey an invitation for a meeting with US congressmen.

It should be noted that a delegation of US congressmen will be in Armenia from June 30 to July 2, and invitations are already being sent to political forces for meetings starting today.

Two days ago, the US Embassy in Armenia requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organize meetings for the delegation with the President of the National Assembly and representatives of three factions, as well as female MPs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then forwarded this letter to the staff of the National Assembly, asking to inform the US embassy about the meetings.

Taking this opportunity, US Ambassador Lynn Tracey also invited Seyran Ohanyan, the leader of the "Armenia" faction, and Arthur Vanetsyan, the leader of the "Honorary" faction, for separate meetings to personally convey the invitation to them and to discuss various issues.

It seems that the ambassador also had a remote objective to gauge the mood of the opposition and to convince them to moderate their resistance against their "patron," Nikol Pashinyan, so that he follows the path they outlined and signs all possible documents.

Seyran Ohanyan, the leader of the "Armenia" faction, confirmed the information about the meeting in a conversation with us, stating: "The ambassador invited us for a meeting primarily to pass the invitation from the US congressmen to us, and we discussed within the framework of that invitation that we will consider the issue of those meetings within our faction. Overall, we discussed the situation; he also asked what we are going to do, and I presented our future plans."

We also inquired about the ambassador's attitude towards the opposition's initiated struggle, police actions, and Pashinyan's steps. Ohanyan said, "I presented to him all the shortcomings that exist in our country today, which primarily concern the violent repression against the opposition and our resistance movement, legal actions being taken, etc. And I said that we would like both you and the European Union to give strict assessments. The ambassador also said that if necessary, they would make statements just like always, again."

We asked Seyran Ohanyan if there was an impression that the ambassador was trying to convince them to back down from their struggle or to ease it a bit. Ohanyan replied, "No, there was no such impression. The main emphasis of that meeting was for preliminary meetings between the opposition forces, ours and 'Honorary,' with the US congressmen, that is, the time, date, where, etc. During the discussions, we also talked about this situation. I presented all the shortcomings that exist in our state today—steps against democracy, repressions, and so on."

For more details, see today's issue of the newspaper.