YEREVAN. – To overcome the political intensity caused by August 9 incident, the oppositional Armenian National Congress (ANC) makes efforts to create trust and constructive atmosphere for the dialogue with authorities. However, these efforts do not meet the corresponding steps by the authorities, ANC statement reads. 

According to ANC, the fifth round of the dialogue between the opposition and authorities on August 16 was devoted to the issue of the incident that occurred between the ANC young activists and police, as a result of which three activists were arrested. It was decided not to publish the details of the discussion yet. However, the expectations of the ANC were not justified, thus it is time to reveal what happened during the last two rounds of the dialogue, reads the statement of Armenian opposition.

During the dialogue the ANC delegation stated that first the arrest issue of the three activists should be solved for the normal dialogue. Moreover, the ANC has its own version of the incident, which contradicts to the version of police.

The delegation of authorities asked time to discuss the issue. During the sixth round on Tuesday the authorities’ representatives rejected to sign the document presented by the opposition. However, they promised that the legal ‘non-discriminative’ process will be spread equally. As a result of the dialogue, the head of the ANC delegation stated that the measure for restrain for Tigran Arakelyan (the last opposition activist currently under arrest) will be changed.

However, the further developments showed that authorities continue the dialogue formally. Existence of political prisoners again hinders the dialogue. Thus the ANC participation in opposition-authorities dialogue is pending as long as the measure of restraint for ANC activist Arakelyan has not changed, reads the statement.