UK Ambassador to Armenia Katherine Leach responded to her previously made remarks on upcoming presidential election.

She thanked everyone for comments in response to her blog – both the positive and negative ones.  

“The blog highlighted both the great joint work we have done with Armenia in 2012, in political, economic and trade, military, cultural, and educational areas, and plan to do in the coming year, and also explored some of the issues around the election – including the kinds of questions Armenia’s partners are asking as they meet the different people involved and watch the election campaign.

As President Sargsyan himself said in an interesting observation in his interview on Radio Liberty, while the elections are of course for Armenia itself first and foremost, they are held within the domain of the international community and it matters that the members of the community consider Armenia to be one of them. I think this puts it very well.

We are both working to understand each other’s points of view better – with the aim of deepening our common values and common understanding. In that spirit – please feel free to continue to share your opinion. I liked that quote from Churchill: the optimist searches for opportunities. That spirit drives me to continuously look for and promote closer links between the UK and Armenia.”