"I do not want to discuss our diplomatic shortcomings, successes, victories or diplomatic defeats at all today. I have already said that we have lost not only on the battlefield, but also in diplomacy, public opinion, information. We have many other defeats, from which we must draw the appropriate conclusions". The Armenian President Armen Sarkissian stated this in an exclusive interview with "Lurer".
To the observation that there are opinions among the public that "you have ambitions to become Prime Minister", the President answered:
"There can be no question of ambition. I am the President of the Republic and, even in a parliamentary country, even in an Armenian parliamentary country, where the functions of the president are very, very limited, the president has certain clear responsibilities and opportunities to support.
The presidential institution should be the platform to be used by both the government and the opposition in the crisis conditions we have today, so that the confrontation comes from the street to the table. We say that the best platform for the settlement of the Karabakh conflict is the platform of the Minsk Group, because diplomats, heads of state came and negotiated at the table, opposing it to the war. Now we have the same inside our country. You do not have to go out to find the truth.
Second, the crisis is not determined by the number of people on the streets. I think we have a really deep crisis in Armenia, and we can understand with a simple analysis why there are not 100 or 200 thousand people on the streets. However, we have a crisis not only in Armenia. In general, it is a deep moral and psychological crisis for the whole Armenian people. It is present in every Armenian, everywhere. We have an economic and political crisis in Armenia, we have a crisis in international relations in general, because the image of our country and our nation is not very positive at present.
We also lost the public-information war, and therefore, if in 1994 we had a world that was very friendly to us, our problems and the Karabakh struggle, today it is not so, because our opponents have worked purposefully for years, and we did not do that".
