YEREVAN. March 9 (Interfax) - First Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1991-1998) views the demand of the leadership of the Armed Forces General Staff for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's resignation as understandable.
"The indignation of the senior command personnel and the army's position on interference in political processes outside of its competence are fully understandable for me, the reason for which is nothing more than a careless attempt by the prime minister to shift the blame for his humiliating defeat onto the army [in the Karabakh war in the fall of 2020]," Ter-Petrosyan said in a statement published on the iLur.am website on Monday.
At the same time, the former president welcomed "the restrained position of the military regarding the calls of some forces to resort to anti-constitutional actions."
"I assess such behavior as an exemplary manifestation of the state thinking of the army leadership and an honest desire to protect the country from destructive shocks," he said.
Ter-Petrosyan described the statements of a number of politicians trying to present a military coup as a means of reaching the country's recovery as "extremely dangerous."
"Of course, there are successful examples (South Korea, Egypt), but dozens of times more cases when revolutions, being of a periodic nature, led to the destruction of statehood and the continuing torment of peoples (Afghanistan, Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon). Therefore, it is the duty of all Armenians to be guided by this awareness and to do everything so that Armenia does not join the ranks of these countries," Ter-Petrosyan said.