Monday, Karapetian Denies Discord With President . Narine Ghalechian Armenia - Prime Minister Karen Karapetian visits the Ararat province, 22Mar2017. Prime Minister Karen Karapetian dismissed on Monday lingering speculation about his mounting tensions with President Serzh Sarkisian, saying that their relationship is "very good, respectful and businesslike." "That's not true," he told reporters when asked about his alleged discord with Sarkisian. Accordingly, Karapetian made clear that he does not intend to resign. He also stood by his previous statements indicating that he would like to retain his post after the president serves out his final term in April next year. "Nothing has changed # My previous answers haven't changed," the premier said after attending, together with Sarkisian and other top state officials, the inauguration of Yerevan's newly reelected Mayor Taron Markarian. A number of Armenian media outlets and commentators have speculated in recent weeks that Sarkisian plans to become prime minister or replace Karapetian by someone else in April 2018. Some of them have claimed that Karapetian will resign or be sacked before that time because of his worsening relationship with the president. The Yerevan daily "Zhoghovurd" reported on June 6 that Karapetian has already twice tendered his resignation and that Sarkisian has refused to accept it. The president dismissed those rumors later on June 6. "The prime minister has no reason to resign," Sarkisian said in rare comments to Armenian journalists. "Periodical reports about alleged differences or a confrontation are untrue." Sarkisian appointed Karapetian as prime minister in September last year with the stated aim of improving the socioeconomic situation in Armenia through more radical reforms. The 53-year-old former business executive has since repeatedly pledged to create a level playing field for all businesses, combat corruption and tax evasion, and attract large-scale investments in the Armenian economy. Yerevan's Reelected Mayor Inaugurated . Narine Ghalechian Armenia - Yerevan Mayor Taron Markarian (R) is congratulated by President Serzh Sarkisian after being sworn in for another term, 12Jun2017. Yerevan's Mayor Taron Markarian was sworn in for another four-year term on Monday one month after leading the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) to a landslide victory in municipal elections. Markarian, in office since 2011, vowed to "honestly and diligently perform the mayor's duties" at an inauguration ceremony attended by President Serzh Sarkisian, Prime Minister Karen Karapetian and other top officials. According to the official results of the May 14 elections, the HHK won more than 70 percent of the vote that gave it 46 of the 65 seats in the municipal council empowered to appoint the city's mayors. The opposition Yelk alliance finished second with 14 council seats. A more radical opposition group, the Yerkir Tsirani party, gained the remaining 5 seats. It decided not to boycott sessions of the Yerevan council after accusing the HHK of buying votes and resorting to other serious irregularities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) rejected last month Yerkir Tsirani's demands to annul the official vote results. Unlike their Yerkir Tsirani colleagues, the 14 council members representing Yelk chose to attend Markarian's inauguration. But they demonstratively refused to stand up when Sarkisian entered a conference hall where the city council holds its sessions. In a speech at the ceremony, Sarkisian gave a largely positive assessment of the 38-year-old mayor's track record, while urging him to do more to address Yerevan's lingering problems and a lack of adequate public transportation in particular. "You must work day and night in order to increase Yerevan residents' respect and trust towards you, maintain you position as the most popular political figure in Yerevan, get even more votes in the next elections and continue to run Yerevan," the president said. Markarian's late father Andranik served as Armenia's prime minister from 2000-2007. The inauguration ceremony coincided with Andranik Markarian's 66th birthday anniversary. Mediators Visit Armenia, Karabakh Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian meets with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group in Yerevan, 10Jun2017. U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group have met with Armenia's and Nagorno-Karabakh's leaders as part of their continuing efforts to relaunch Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. The three mediators met with President Serzh Sarkisian and Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in Yerevan on Saturday at the start of their latest tour of the Karabakh conflict zone. They then proceeded to Stepanakert for similar talks with Bako Sahakian, the Karabakh president, that were held on Monday. They are expected to travel to Baku later this week or early next. The envoys gave few details of their talks when they spoke to reporters in the Karabakh capital. "France, the United States and Russia are making every effort to achieve progress on this issue," Stephane Visconti, the Minsk Group's French co-chair, was reported to say. Neither the mediators nor official Armenian sources specified whether they pressed for the conduct of high-level Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations. Visconti's American opposite number, Richard Hoagland, expressed hope in March that Nalbandian and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov will "prepare the ground" for a meeting of their presidents. The two ministers reported no agreements to that effect after they last met in Moscow in April. Nalbandian said on May 30 that an Armenian-Azerbaijani summit is unlikely to be organized "for the time being." Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliyev most recently met in Vienna and Saint Petersburg in May and June last year. The Karabakh peace process has been essentially deadlocked since then. Meeting with Visconti, Hoagland and Russia's Igor Popov on Saturday, Nalbandian accused Baku of continuing to ignore their calls for the conflicting parties to comply with confidence-building agreements that were reached by Aliyev and Sarkisian last year. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, he said the mediators should take "concrete actions" in order to "rein in this unconstructive and provocative policy by Azerbaijan." Sahakian likewise accused Baku of continuing ceasefire violations along the Karabakh "line of contact" when met with the co-chairs in Stepanakert. The spokesman for the Karabakh leader, Davit Babayan, was quoted by Artsakhpress.am as stressing the importance of bolstering the ceasefire regime. Babayan also said that the warring sides still have a "long way to go" to resolve the conflict. Their positions on a peaceful settlement are "almost diametrically opposite," he said. Mainstream Oppositionist Critical Of Attack On Yerevan Police Base . Karlen Aslanian . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Opposition politician Edmon Marukian speaks to RFE/RL's Armenian service, Yerevan, 12Jun2017 Armed members of an Armenian fringe opposition group broke the law when they seized a police station in Yerevan last summer, a leader of the opposition Yelk alliance insisted over the weekend. Edmon Marukian pointedly declined to describe as political prisoners the gunmen who were arrested following a two-week standoff with security forces which left three Armenian police officers dead. The gunmen stormed the police compound in Yerevan's southern Erebuni district and took several police officers hostage on July 17, 2016. They demanded President Serzh Sarkisian's resignation and the release of Zhirayr Sefilian, the jailed leader of their Founding Parliament movement. The authorities rejected those demands before forcing the armed group to lay down its weapons and surrender. The group's most important members went on trial last week, facing a range of serious criminal charges. Two of them also stand accused of murdering the policemen. All of the defendants reject the accusations as politically motivated. Armenia -- An armed man speaks to the press after pro-opposition gunmen locked in a week-long hostage standoff with Armenian authorities released the final four police officers held captive in Yerevan, July 23, 2016 n an interview with RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am), Marukian said he cannot refer to them as political prisoners because their actions involved an "illegal arms circulation" and resulted in casualties. "If I, for example, pick a gun and walk to RFE/RL for an interview but get arrested on the street, could we claim that Edmon Marukian is a political prisoner?" he said. Accordingly, the U.S.-educated lawyer asserted that the attack on the Erebuni police facility had "elements of a crime." "If we say that there was no such thing, that they did nothing wrong # that would mean [going to] the other extreme," he said. "If people armed with assault rifles seize a [police] regiment, can I really say that it's OK and there are no elements of crime in their actions?" Marukian's Yelk finished third in Armenia's recent parliamentary elections. Nikol Pashinian, another leader of the bloc formed in December, criticized the gunmen during the Erebuni standoff. Armenia - Relatives of police officers killed in a standoff with opposition gunmen attend a remembrance ceremony in Yerevan, 28Sep2016. The gunmen, who referred to themselves as Sasna Tsrer (Baredevils of Sasun), won the backing of other prominent opposition figures, notably former Foreign Ministers Vartan Oskanian and Raffi Hovannisian as well as Zaruhi Postanjian. Postanjian, who set up a radical opposition party earlier this year, stood by her view that the jailed gunmen are political prisoners. "As a lawyer, I insist that there were no elements of crime in their actions because they willingly came out of [the besieged compound] and laid down their arms," she said. Both the United States and the European Union condemned the deadly attack last July. "We obviously condemn strongly the use of violence to effect political change in Armenia or anywhere," a U.S. State Department spokesman said at the time. "We stress that the use of force to achieve political change is unacceptable," the EU Delegation in Yerevan said for its part. Press Review (Saturday, June 10) "Haykakan Zhamanak" reports on what it sees as widespread violations of traffic and parking rules in and outside Yerevan by the owners of cars carrying Russian license plates. "All you have to do to realize that is to walk around Yerevan's center in evening hours and see how such cars are parked on second lanes and violate all possible traffic rules," writes the paper. It also carries photographs of several such cars parked at unauthorized locations near Yerevan's Zvartnots international airport. Speaking to "168 Zham," Naira Zohrabian, a senior representative of Gagik Tsarukian's political alliance, notes with satisfaction that the alliance and the opposition Yelk bloc will have some say in the upcoming formation of a new anti-corruption body. She argues that the government and the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) were initially not willing to make any concessions to the parliamentary opposition when they first submitted a corresponding bill to the parliament. "Of course this is not enough, but this is the minimum that we could get today," says Zohrabian. "One gets the impression that the authorities have suddenly woken up and discovered that there is corruption in the country," writes "Hraparak." "Some evade taxes, others abuse their positions or carry out illegal imports, and the authorities horrified by that are hastily trying to enforce the law in the country." The paper downplays recent prosecutions on corruption charges of several judges and prosecutors, saying that they are not high-ranking enough. It says that if the authorities were really committed to combatting corruption they would have sacked the mayor of the Armenian town of Hrazdan whose underage son ran over and killed a pedestrian while driving a local government car last week. "An escalation is not a war," Sergey Markedonov, a Russian political analyst, tells "Aravot," commenting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "There have always been and there will be escalations when, for example the [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chairs visit the region or when there are important negotiations. War, on the other hand, presupposes serious military-political changes, serious casualties." (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org