win the 1996 presidential election by a large margin due to the opposition being divided, three other candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed Vazgen Manukyan. According to the official results, Ter-Petrosyan received about 52%, just above the 50% required to win without a runoff election. His reelection was marred by allegations of electoral fraud reported by the opposition and supported by many international observers. On 25 September 1996, around 200,000 people in Yerevan came out to protest the election results, then stormed the parliament building and beat the speaker and deputy speaker of parliament following a speech by Vazgen Manukyan. Tanks and troops were brought into Yerevan to end the protests. On the same day, Defence Minister Vazgen Sargsyan stated that "even if they [the opposition] win 100 percent of the votes, neither the Army nor the National Security and Interior Ministry would recognize such political leaders." Later in January 1999, Ter-Petrosyan's interior minister at the time of the election Vano Siradeghyan admitted that the government had resorted to vote-rigging to secure Ter-Petrosyan's victory without a runoff election and stated that after the crackdown, Ter-Petrosyan fell into a three-month depression. According to Siradeghyan, "the whole state apparatus was demoralized, paralyzed and no government was formed during [the ensuing] three months." Ter-Petrosyan's popularity waned further as the opposition started blaming him for the economic quagmire that Armenia's post-Soviet economy was in. Resignation Ter-Petrosyan was forced to step down in February 1998 after advocating a compromised settlement of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh which many Armenians regarded as undermining their security. Ter-Petrosyan's key ministers, namely then-Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan, Defense Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Interior Minister Serzh Sargsyan, refused to accept a peace plan for Karabakh put forward by international mediators in September 1997. The leadership of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic were also opposed to the plan. The plan, accepted by Ter-Petrosyan and Azerbaijan's leader Heydar Aliyev, called for a "phased" settlement of the conflict which would postpone an agreement on Karabakh's status, the main stumbling block. The "phased" approach envisioned the return of most of the Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territories around Nagorno-Karabakh in exchange for the deployment of OSCE peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts in the first and second phases, followed by the lifting of the Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades of Armenia in the third stage, and leaving for last the issues of Nagorno-Karabakh's status, the Lachin Corridor, and the