YEREVAN. – The absence of the oppositional Armenian National Congress (ANC) at the next round of the negotiations with the authorities was a real surprise for the authority working group, ruling MP from the Prosperous Armenia Party Naira Zohrabyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“Our colleagues from ANC should believe that the state needs a political atmosphere, which excludes the existence of rival camps, hostility and resentment. All the political powers in Armenia should have realized it especially after the tragic events of March 1-2 in 2008 and should try to create an atmosphere of political tolerance,” told Zohrabyan and added that the dialogue with the ANC is an attempt to create such an atmosphere.

The MP also stated that the ANC members of the delegation should understand that political process cannot be connected to an incident, which belongs to legal sphere. In case the ANC members realize it, the coalition is ready to restart the dialogue. Otherwise, authorities will have to state they did everything, but got a non-adequate response by the opposition.

The seventh round of authorities-opposition dialogue should have taken place on Friday. However, the ANC declared it finds useless to participate in the negotiations. Later the ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan said that they will continue dialogue with authorities only when the ANC activist Tigran Arakelyan is released. [Arakelyan and 6 other ANC activists were arrested on August 9 as a result of the fight with police. Later all were released, except Arakelyan.]

Head of the authorities working group Davit Harutyunyan called the absence of the ANC at the dialogues a political demarche.