YEREVAN, JANUARY 22, NOYAN TAPAN. "The prospect of being deprived of the vote in PACE is indeed serious, but country's internal split is more dangerous," Hmayak Hovhannisian, the Chairman of the Union of Political Scientists of Armenia, said at the January 22 press conference. According to him, today Karabakh is no longer a supreme moral value for all Armenians as it was in 1988. "At that time Karabakh could not be a target of criticism: even the worst and most dubious views of Karabakh residents were perceived with tolerance in Armenia," the political scientist reminded. While at present, according to him, opinions are voiced in the opposition sphere that the Nagorno Karabakh settlement should be left to the Karabakh residents. The way out of the formed situation, as H. Hovhannisian stated, is holding of special parliamentary elections. According to him, the people should be given a possibility to express its political position, as indeed the people is the third force of the home political sphere. H. Hovhannisian added that it is very important to disclose and to call for liability those indeed guilty of the March 1 murders to weaken the current tension. He drew parallels between the March 1 and 1999 October 27 crimes emphasizing that after the incident of "27" the immediate executors of the crime at least appeared before the court. Touching upon opinions on Council of Europe's using double standards to Armenia and Azerbaijan, H. Hovhannisian said that such standards should be used. He explained it by saying that Armenia is the first Christian state, to which democratic values should be peculiar. And Azerbaijan and other Mohammedan countries, as he classed it, hardly perceive those values, and the approaches to them can be milder. "Privileges are always given to a disabled, a weak," H. Hovhannisian said.

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