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Authorities disperse groups of protesters in Armenian capital

Armenian police yesterday dispersed opposition protesters from the Freedom Square in Yerevan, sweeping away a tent camp after 11 days of non-stop demonstrations against alleged vote rigging.

Hundreds of riot police cleared the square by Yerevan's opera house of a hard core of some 1,500 protesters, who had been camping there ever since the Feb. 19 presidential election in which Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian defeated opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian.

Police refused to comment on the fate of the protesters and chased media away from the square as army trucks arrived to take away the makeshift tent camp.

Ter-Petrosian's headquarters said the opposition leader narrowly evaded arrest when police and anti-riot units swarmed through and surrounded the square.

Ter-Petrosian, a former president of the mountainous former Soviet republic, vowed defiance.

"Today at 3pm we will try to continue our peaceful protest action," he said in a statement.

Police could be seen beating some protesters and appeared to haul away others, although there was no immediate information about the number of arrests. Several dozen people could be seen hurling abuse at the officers.

Ter-Petrosian ran on an anti-corruption platform and alleges massive vote fraud in the election.

Last week he had described the protests, which attracted tens of thousands of people at their peak, as "a pure, classic bourgeois democratic revolution."

The Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called for restraint. OSCE observers said earlier that the election "mostly" met international standards.

The opposition claimed major fraud in the poll count and accused Sarkisian of using state resources to promote his candidacy, while activists campaigning for Ter-Petrosian across the country were beaten up.

Although both the round-the-clock tent camp and massive daytime rallies remained peaceful, the authorities had been warning that their patience was wearing thin.

Earlier, President Robert Kocharian, who backed Sarkisian in the election, described the protests as an attempt at an illegal power grab and promised the government's response would be "decisive and firm."
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