Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

Party,” which contained not only Karabakhis. The chief generalissimo 
was Vazgen Sarkisian, Armenia’s charismatic first defense minister, 
most prominent military leader, and emerging feudal baron. In 1993, he 
founded the Yerkrapah veterans movement, which took over large 
areas of the economy. 
The “Karabakh Party” was one wing of the Armenian ruling elite. 
The other comprised Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Move­
ment (ANM), which had become a ruling party that monopolized po­
litical life in the country. In 1994–1995 Ter-Petrosian moved to suppress 
the only other party with strong grassroots support in the country, the 
nationalist Dashnaktsutiun. He alleged that it was harboring a secret 
terrorist organization named Dro. The Dashnaktsutiun was suspended 
and the ban was lifted only after the 1995 parliamentary elections. 
In September 1996, Ter-Petrosian stood for reelection. His public 
support had ebbed. Tens of thousands of professionals were emigrat­
ing, and the country was desperately poor. Disillusionment with the 
ruling elite was strong. Ter-Petrosian’s former comrade, now turned 
bitter political rival, Vazgen Manukian, capitalized on the popular 
mood and his support surged after three other presidential candidates 
stood down in his favor. At public rallies, Manukian outshone Ter-Pet­
rosian, who came across as remote. 
On polling day, 22 September, most international observers con­
cluded that Ter-Petrosian had failed to win the first round of the elec­
tion outright. However, the Central Electoral Commission declared him 
the winner, with 52 percent of the vote. Manukian’s supporters pro-
tested and took the parliament building by storm, beating up the 
speaker and deputy speaker. Ter-Petrosian moved tanks on to the 
streets of Yerevan and had several opposition figures detained. The ob­
servers declared that the polls had been marred by serious irregulari­
ties—saying in effect, that Ter-Petrosian’s election was illegitimate. 
The shabby manner in which Ter-Petrosian was reelected tarnished 
his reputation and put him in the debt of his security ministers, who 

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had helped him fend off Vazgen Manukian. At the height of the crisis, 
Defense Minister Vazgen Sarkisian famously blurted out: “Even if they 
[the opposition] win 100 percent of the votes, neither the army nor the 
National Security Service, nor the Ministry of the Interior would recog­
nize such political leaders.”
7 
The president tried to bolster his authority by appointing as his 
new prime minister Armen Sarkisian, Armenia’s ambassador in Lon-
don and a man with an honest reputation. But in March 1998, Sarkisian 
fell ill and was forced to step down. Considering possible successors for 
Sarkisian, Ter-Petrosian hit on the candidature of another popular fig­
ure, Robert Kocharian. Ter-Petrosian commented: “I thought that by 
being here, as prime minister of Armenia, Robert would understand 
Armenia, would understand what Karabakh represents from the point 
of view of Armenia.”
8 
In other words, if Kocharian was put in charge of 
the Armenian economy, he would get firsthand experience of how Ar­
menia was suffering from the nonresolution of the Karabakh dispute. 
THE FALL OF TER-PETROSIAN 
In 1997, the Minsk Group mediators were more coordinated and pre-
paring for a new push to solve the Karabakh dispute. At the Lisbon 
summit in December 1996, France had been nominated to join Russia as 
cochair of the Minsk Group. Azerbaijan objected on the grounds that 
France, with its large Armenian community, was biased toward Arme­
nia. In February 1997, a compromise was reached whereby the United 
States became a third cochair of the Minsk Group, alongside Russia and 
France. 
The presence of three heavyweights in the Minsk Group gave the 
peace process new impetus, and in May 1997 the cochairs presented a 
new comprehensive plan. The Karabakh Armenians had reservations, 
but the leaders of both Armenia and Azerbaijan were positive. Speak­
ing in Washington, President Aliev made an important public conces­
sion when he declared that Azerbaijan should not expect the immediate 
return of Lachin and Shusha. In September 1997, the Minsk Group 
mediators presented a modified “step-by-step” version of the plan, in 
which security issues for Nagorny Karabakh were included in a first 
phase. It was stated that following Armenian withdrawal from the 
occupied territories and the demilitarization of Karabakh, the parties 

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259 
would agree to continue negotiating in order “to speedily attain an 
all-encompassing regulation of all other aspects of the conflict, in­
cluding the political aspect, which includes defining the status of Na­
gorno-Karabakh and resolving the problem of Lachin, Shusha and 
Shaumian.”
9 
Ter-Petrosian was enthusiastic about the plan he was shown. He 
says that earlier that year he had received a gloomy prognosis from the 
Armenian Transport Ministry and the World Bank on how the Armen­
ian economy was coping with the Azerbaijani and Turkish “blockade.” 
He concluded that transport costs were prohibitively high and that sus­
tained economic growth was unattainable. He also doubted the ability 
of the Armenian Diaspora to rescue the economy—a view that brought 
him into conflict with his prime minister and defense minister. Ter-
Petrosian says: 
We were getting ten million dollars from the Diaspora every year. 
That’s all. Robert [Kocharian] and Vazgen Sarkisian said that if we 
worked well, we could get 450 million dollars a year. I showed them 
that that was impossible. On those grounds, analyzing all this, I con­
cluded that if we didn’t solve the Karabakh question, it would be bad 
for both Armenia and Karabakh. Time was playing against us. 
On 26 September 1997, Ter-Petrosian used his first major press con­
ference in five years to set out his arguments in favor of compromise on 
Nagorny Karabakh. He said the international community would never 
recognize Karabakh’s independence or its unification with Armenia, 
and the current situation was also unacceptable. “I do not consider a 
maintenance of the status quo realistic,” he said. “I concede that we 
could insist on holding out for six months or a year, but in the end the 
international community’s cup of patience will overflow.” The presi­
dent offered the example of the Bosnian Serbs, who had to settle for less 
in the Dayton agreement, after holding out for more. The only answer, 
he concluded, was to agree to a step-by-step solution to the dispute, 
which did not betray the Karabakh Armenians’ fundamental interests.
10 
Ter-Petrosian’s remarks raised a storm of allegations that he was 
betraying Karabakh. The president responded on 1 November with 
a newspaper article entitled “War or Peace? Time to be Thoughtful.” 
His tone was dry and sarcastic as he rebutted his critics point by point. 
Ter-Petrosian wrote that only six people in Armenia and Nagorny 

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Karabakh understood the complexities of the dispute and accused his 
opponents of being enslaved to myths. 
Public dismay in Armenia was to be anticipated. More worrying for 
Ter-Petrosian was that the Karabakh Armenian authorities were also 
indignant. On 6 November, the Nagorny Karabakh “Foreign Ministry” 
issued an unprecedented statement in which it disputed several of Ter-
Petrosian’s points. Arkady Gukasian, who had just been elected “pres­
ident” of Karabakh in succession to Kocharian, spelled out his dissent 
in an interview on 7 October. He rejected the Minsk Group’s latest 
proposals and said that “however badly the people live, there are 
holy things, there are positions that they will never surrender under 
any circumstances.” And Gukasian also had words of warning for Ter-
Petrosian: 
It has been said that Armenia will agree to any decision taken by 
Nagorny Karabakh. So in that sense our disagreements [with Yerevan] 
are disturbing, they are bad. But if these disagreements worsen, I think 
Armenia should keep its word and leave the decision to Karabakh. We 
ourselves ought to take the decision that we think necessary.
11 
The quarrel came to a head in the new year of 1998. Gukasian at-
tended a meeting of Armenia’s Security Council on 7–8 January, when 
Kocharian and the interior and defense ministers, Serzh and Vazgen 
Sarkisian, all spoke out against the Minsk Group plan. The ruling