Robert Kocharian told the summer session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on 23 June that the police action to disperse demonstrators in Yerevan early on 13 April was justified because \"the organizers...were demonstratively calling for civil disobedience,\" RFE/RL\'s Armenian Service reported. He further said that attempts by the Armenian opposition to emulate the \"Rose Revolution\" in Georgia last November and force him to step down will fail because Armenia\'s economy is \"developing dynamically,\" and the government functions efficiently and is capable of maintaining public order. Kocharian expressed \"regret\" that the Armenian opposition sought to induce the PACE to condemn the police reprisals, adding that such attempts to \"settle scores\" should be conducted in the Armenian parliament rather than in an international body. Responding after his 20-minute address to a question from an Azerbaijani parliamentarian, Kocharian acknowledged and said he is proud of his role in the Karabakh war in the early 1990s. (He was named chairman in August 1992 of the State Defense Committee, the de facto wartime government of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.) Kocharian said his children were deprived of their childhood by being forced to \"hide in a basement\" for three years during the Azerbaijani artillery bombardment of Stepanakert. (RFE/RL)