Armenia’s former consul general to St. Petersburg, Russia, on Tuesday leveled scathing criticism at the authorities for what he described as a “weak foreign policy”, saying that its consequences might prove “fateful” for the country.

“I’ve been in politics for a long time now and I don’t remember a time when Armenia would be in such an embarrassment in terms of its foreign policy,” says Ruben Hakobyan, who currently heads the Akunk center of political analyses.

As an example of what he views as erroneous foreign policy Hakobyan cited President Serzh Sargsyan’s recent statement in which he effectively agreed to the Turkish proposal on setting up a joint panel of historians to review the historical facts regarding the 1915 genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

On Monday, Eduard Sharmazanov, the spokesman for the governing Republican Party, insisted that the president’s agreement did not imply his questioning the fact of genocide.

“In such a situation it is better, for example, to freeze the genocide issue than agree to setting up a commission for verifying facts,” Hakobyan says. “Say, the commission arrives at the conclusion that there was no genocide. What should the president of Armenia do in that case?”

Hakobyan says another proof of this “weak foreign policy” is the recent visit of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to Azerbaijan and his signing an interstate agreement with his Azerbaijani counterpart.

“Though, I don’t share the opinion that Russia has been carrying out a pro-Azerbaijan policy of late. Rather, it is following a pro-Russian policy,” says Hakobyan. “Simply, we implement a wrong policy. After all, we should understand that for Russia, too, there are no constant friends and foes, but there are constant interests.”

And it is these “constant interests” that Hakobyan says prompted the Moscow-Tehran railroad to pass via Baku and not through Armenia.

Hakobyan, a former Dashnaktsutyun party member, also commented on the continuing discussion around President Sargsyan’s invitation to his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul to visit Yerevan. He, in particular, criticized Armenia’s authorities for engaging in political “flirting” instead of “taking clear steps”.

“[Former president] Robert Kocharyan’s statement that ‘If I were, I wouldn’t do that’ is not a political category,” says Hakobyan. “After all, Kocharyan had done everything for Sargsyan to become president. And it is not acceptable at all to wave fists after a fight.”

Evaluating Armenia’s current foreign and domestic policies as “critical”, the former diplomat sees only one option – organizing pre-term presidential and then parliamentary elections.