{"id":97066,"date":"2011-05-19T21:53:29","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T16:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=97066"},"modified":"2011-05-19T21:54:29","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T16:54:29","slug":"eu-parliament-chief-says-democracy-vital-for-armenia%e2%80%99s-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/05\/19\/eu-parliament-chief-says-democracy-vital-for-armenia%e2%80%99s-stability.html","title":{"rendered":"EU Parliament Chief Says Democracy Vital For Armenia\u2019s Stability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Armenia should democratize its political system and carry out other reforms if it wants to avoid more upheavals in the future, the president of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek said on Thursday, ending a two-day visit to Yerevan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/content\/article\/24180293.html\"><strong>RFE\/RL&#8217;s Armenian service reports<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have the experience of North Africa,\u201d he told RFE\/RL\u2019s Armenian service in an interview. \u201cThere was stability but for the short term. But there was no democracy and that is why there could have been no long-term stability there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the Armenian authorities and opposition understand this,\u201d he said, stressing the need to \u201cbuild strong democratic institutions and strong democratic procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Buzek arrived in Yerevan on Wednesday on the second leg of a tour of the three South Caucasus states. He met with President Serzh Sargsyan, parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamyan and leaders of the country\u2019s main political groups. The political situation in Armenia was high on the agenda of these meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Buzek said recent political development in the country bode well for what he described as \u201creconciliation\u201d between the Armenian government and its political opponents, notably the Armenian National Congress (HAK) led by Levon Ter-Petrossian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a very good beginning for reconciliation,\u201d he said of the Sargsyan administration\u2019s recent overtures to the HAK.<\/p>\n<p>According to the HAK, Buzek and Ter-Petrossian discussed \u201cthe possibility of launching dialogue between the authorities and the opposition\u201d at their meeting held late on Wednesday. A statement issued by the opposition alliance gave no details of that discussion.<\/p>\n<p>Buzek asserted that Sargsyan paved the way for such dialogue also with a \u201cvery promising\u201d speech last December in which the Armenian president pledged to turn Armenia into a \u201cEuropean-style democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do not know how the implementation of the [government\u2019s reform] proposals will look like in the future,\u201d said Buzek. \u201cBut those promises are quite encouraging in themselves, and we can only expect further developments.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armenia should democratize its political system and carry out other reforms if it wants to avoid more upheavals in the future, the president of&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[17102,26774,26773,11268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}