Calls for New National Unity Government
Yerevan—Meeting in the Republic’s capital yesterday, the Heritage Party convened its nationwide political council for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chaired by Armenia’s first minister of foreign affairs and Party co-founder Raffi K. Hovannisian, the council’s 50 delegates from across the country opened with a moment of silence for the thousands who fell during the Azerbaijani-Turkish invasion and occupation of Artsakh.
Hearing a variety of reports, and reviewing a comprehensive accounting, from the Party’s executive board and its consecutive chairpersons Andranik Grigoryan and Narine Dilbaryan, the political council deliberated in depth on the current state of affairs in the homeland and the region together with possible scenarios of their development.
Armenia’s international standing now shaken, its vital national interests, and the imperative of civic harmony were the benchmarks for the domestic and foreign policy analyses that followed.
The Heritage Party’s political council decided unanimously 1) to underscore that the November 2020 and January 2021 trilateral statements did not constitute finally binding peace treaties, which require legislative ratification and judicial review, but rather were militarily imposed ceasefire arrangements; 2) to call for the creation of a new national unity government of professionals to replace the one that signed them, pending stabilization of the country and organization of elections; 3) to demand from it the reinstatement of the territorial integrity (deoccupation on the part of Azerbaijan) of the Republic of Armenia; 4) also to demand recognition, at least de facto, of Artsakh's sovereignty and its territorial integrity; and 5) on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Moscow to call on the Russian Federation, as a strategic partner and in good faith, to annul, rather than to extend or deepen, the application of its anti-Armenian provisions.