Levon Ter-Petrosyan §

Born in Aleppo in 1945 to genocide-survivor parents who repatriated to Soviet Armenia in 1946; trained as an Armenologist and orientalist (Leningrad University and the Matenadaran), specialising in early-medieval Armenian textual transmission. One of the eleven members of the Karabakh Committee imprisoned in Moscow January–May 1989; emerged as the leading figure of the Pan-Armenian National Movement and was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR in August 1990. Won the October 1991 presidential election and led Armenia through the 1992–94 Karabakh war and the post-Soviet economic collapse; banned the ARF in December 1994. Re-elected in September 1996 in a vote criticised for irregularities. Resigned on 3 February 1998 after his cabinet, Defence Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Interior Minister Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan, rejected his "phased" Karabakh-settlement framework presented in his September 1997 essay "War or Peace? Time to Get Serious". Returned to opposition in 2008; his Armenian National Congress contested the disputed February 2008 election that ended in the 1 March 2008 Yerevan events.