Within the frames of the Lunch with the FT, the reporters of the newspaper usually have a lunch with the guest during which they are talking about various topics.
Armenpress presents some parts of the interview:
“Having Lunch with the FT with the president of Armenia proves as diplomatically ticklish as it is gastronomically sensational. True to the traditions of lavish hospitality in his tiny Caucasian country, Armen Sarkissian refuses to accept that any visitor could ever treat him to lunch in his home city of Yerevan. But when I tell him of the FT’s rigid rules, he suggests a generous compromise: we should have a second lunch two days later which, he reluctantly concedes, the FT may be allowed to cover. So precedent is breached, but honour satisfied.
The first of our two girth-busting and brain-bursting lunches takes place in Ankyun, an Italian-Armenian fusion restaurant in the centre of Yerevan, a quirky urban hybrid of slab-faced Soviet architecture and grandiose Caucasian style. When Sarkissian arrives, preceded by a posse of leather-jacketed, earpiece-wearing bodyguards, we are soon drawn into a discussion of the drama of last year’s “velvet revolution” and the stand-off between the then prime minister, Serzh Sargsyan, and mass opposition on the street. “It was very, very, very tense. There was no dialogue between those on the street and the government and we were heading towards a confrontation,” he says. Sarkissian’s instinct, which his advisers thought “mad”, was simply to walk into the crowd of protesters gathered in Republic Square to meet the opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan and hear what he had to say. “I just had the feeling that was the right thing to do,” he says.
But our conversation rapidly sweeps over a broad range of subjects, from theoretical physics, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Byron and Kim Kardashian to Sarkissian’s theory of “quantum politics”, all sprinkled with a fair dose of Caucasian culture, cuisine and intrigue. Sarkissian has, after all, lived many lives during his 65 years. “Life is always preparing you for something, you just never know for what,” says Sarkissian.
During our conversation, Sarkissian frequently harks back to Armenia’s rich and troubled past but has his eyes fixed firmly on the future. I ask him about the recent speech in which he said that if the 20th century had been the century of natural resources, then the 21st century would be that of human resources. He explains that we are living through a period of extraordinary technological change, which he describes as an era of rapid evolution, or “r-evolution”, as he has dubbed it. The ability to learn and adapt is what will differentiate the winners from losers in this century. This explosion of knowledge is partly a numbers game. In Isaac Newton’s day, there were perhaps 1,000 people in the world studying advanced mechanics. In Albert Einstein’s day, there were perhaps 10,000 scientists worldwide researching quantum physics. But today, he estimates, there are hundreds of millions of people engaged in scientific research and technological development, not just in the famous universities and multinational companies but in thousands of innovative start-ups. “If you can find Newton in 1,000 and Einstein in 10,000, imagine how many talented people can you find in hundreds of millions? This new world is a world of innovation and start-ups.” Sarkissian is keen to seize the opportunities of this new revolution, and argues that the power of innovation does not only apply to science, technology and business but also to the way that countries run themselves. Governments must become a lot more agile and education systems need to be reimagined. “Armenia is one of the new start-ups of the 21st century,” he says.
The first of Sarkissian’s lives was as a theoretical physicist in the Soviet Union, winning the prestigious Lenin prize and the rare opportunity in 1984 to pursue research at the University of Cambridge alongside, among others, Stephen Hawking.
On the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Sarkissian was asked to become independent Armenia’s first ambassador to London, a post he filled again on two later occasions — a record, he believes, at the Court of St James’s. For good measure, he also opened embassies and missions in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the EU, Nato and the Vatican. “I dreamt that I could do both science and diplomacy. But being a research physicist is like being a concert pianist. Unless you practice every day, it is gone. It becomes a hobby,” he says, regretfully.
His third life began in 1996 when he became Armenia’s prime minister, a demanding job cut short the following year when he was diagnosed with cancer. On his recovery, he returned to London to pursue a lucrative career as a business adviser to some of the world’s biggest multinationals, interspersed with further ambassadorial spells.
But in 2018 he was once again lured back into Armenian politics after being elected by parliament to serve as president. Almost immediately, he walked into a raging political crisis. Sargsyan [Serzh Sargsyan], who had been president for the previous 10 years, had tried to retain power by rewriting the constitution and assuming the newly beefed-up role of prime minister. But this had triggered mass protests and fears that the country might spiral into violent confrontation.
Putting his extensive diplomatic wiles to good use, Sarkissian shuttled between the two sides and consulted Russian, US and EU representatives to broker a settlement. He urged all parties to come together on the eve of the anniversary of the Armenian genocide of 1915, commemorated each year on April 24. [Serzh] Sargsyan’s dramatic resignation soon followed, paving the way for fresh elections. Mercifully, Armenia avoided the conflict that disfigured the so-called colour revolutions in several other former Soviet republics. Sarkissian is full of praise for the restraint shown by all sides, including Russian president Vladimir Putin. “I think everyone behaved properly,” he says.
Sarkissian is now basking in the afterglow, acting as a father figure to a young, reform-minded government led by the former opposition leader Pashinyan. Hope has finally broken out in a country more familiar with tragedy. He notices that a song by Charles Aznavour, that late, great Armenian-French singer, is playing in the background. Sarkissian reminisces that when he was ambassador to the EU, he would invite Aznavour to Brussels twice a year, guaranteeing that pretty much the entire European Commission queued up to come to dinner.
As we fold thin slices of pancetta and pepperoni pizza and munch away, Sarkissian tells me about some of the leaders he has known best and most admired, including Israel’s Shimon Peres and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher. In particular, he remembers a trip that Thatcher made to Armenia in 1990 following the devastating earthquake of 1988, which killed some 45,000...
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