The office of Robert Qocharyan, the second president of the RA, has decided to respond to the talks Levon Ter-Petrosyan gave during the March 1 rally. The latter particularly mentioned in his talks that the foreign policy of RA was quite successful in the 90s (meaning the period when he was the president), it promoted the national interests of the country "as Vazgen Sargsyan, Robert Qocharyan and Artur Tovmasyan had acknowledged back in those days".
Ter-Petrosyan claims, that in its turn, Qocharyan's regime raised the issue of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide; that issue obliged Armenia to establish the joint committee of Armenian- Turkish historians. The first president also believes that due to Robert Qocharyan's fault Nagorno- Karabakh was cut out from the process of talks on conflict regulation.
In response to Ter-Petrosyan's accusations, Qicharyan's press secretary Victor Soghomonya published an article on Qocharyan's official website www.2rd.am. In the article Soghomonyan called Ter-Petrosyan's talks a lowbrow propaganda maneuver. According to him, Ter-Petrosyan's only accomplishment was the Lisbon Summit in terms of which negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh's incorporation into Azerbaijan were held and "broad powers of autonomy" were the best of a bad lot. Comparing the outomes of the summit with the Prague ones (that summit was held during Qocharyan's presidency) Soghomomyan noted that the Prague process consolidated the right of nations to self-determination and the need to hold a referendum in the NKR.
As for the process of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, according to the second president's press secretary, in the period 1998-2008 more than 10 countries recognized the Armenian Genocide at the domestic level. As for the historians' committee, in 2005 in his letter to Erdogan Qocharyan mentioned about the government's responsibility for the establishment of diplomatic relations and that heads of governments have no right to push the responsibility down on historians.
As for cutting NKR out of negotiations, according to Soghomonyan, NKR representatives had stopped participating in negotiations a year before Qocharyan took over the government. Bilateral meetings between Armenia and Azerbaijan were taking place starting from 1990 parallel to the Minsk Process.
Soghomonyan quoted the words of Zhirayr Liparatyan, the then counselor to Ter-Petrosyan. The latter gave a talk in London in January 1997, particularly saying that Armenia would not be negotiating with Azerbaijan concerning Nagorno-Karabakh. Liparatyan said that "in those days Armenia accommodated Azerbaijan in holding bilateral negotiations in order to mitigate the process of talks".
Soghomonyan believes that Ter-Petrosyan's talks, his cynical approach take one aback for Ter-Petrosyan and his associates have been blaming Qocharyan for their own actions.