Friday, July 21, 2017 Karabakh Leader `Unlikely' To Seek Reelection In 2020 July 21, 2017 . Hovannes Movsisian Nagorno-Karabakh - Vitali Balasanian, secretary of Karabakh's Security Council, is interviewed by RFE/RL in Stepanakert, 21Jul2017. Bako Sahakian, Nagorno-Karabakh's president, is unlikely seek another term in the next presidential election due in 2020, a retired Karabakh army general currently allied to him said on Friday. "I don't think that the current president will run in 2020," said Vitali Balasanian, the secretary of Karabakh's Security Council. "It's up to him to decide. But my personal view is that I can't imagine that," Balasanian told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) in Stepanakert. Earlier this week, the Karabakh parliament controversially extended Sahakian's rule by electing him as the unrecognized republic's interim president. He will serve at least until Karabakh completes in 2020 its transition to a fully presidential system of government in line with a new constitution enacted earlier this year. The previous constitution barred Sahakian from seeking a third term. But under the current one, he can run in the next presidential election slated for 2020. The Karabakh leader has not ruled out his participation in the vote, fueling more criticism of his constitutional reform by local opposition figures. Asked whether he himself could run for president in 2020, Balasanian said: "Time will tell. It's too early say yes or no now." A former deputy commander of Karabakh's Armenian-backed army, Balasanian was the main opposition candidate in the last presidential election held in 2012. Official election results gave him around 33 percent of the vote, compared with more than 66 percent polled by Sahakian. Balasanian described the election as "free but not fair" at the time, accusing the incumbent of abusing administrative resources. He agreed to become the secretary of Sahakian's Security Council last year. The 58-year-old retired general is one of Karabakh's most prominent veterans of the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan. He commanded Karabakh Armenians forces in the eastern Askeran district throughout the war. Armenia Needs Eurasian Union Membership, Insists Ruling Party July 21, 2017 Armenia - Eduard Sharmazanov, spokesman for the ruling Republican Party, at a news conference in Yerevan, 14May2017. President Serzh Sarkisian's Republican Party (HHK) has dismissed an opposition leader's calls for Armenia to leave the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Edmon Marukian, a pro-Western leader of the opposition Yelk alliance, advocated an exit from the EEU last week after Russia stopped recognizing the validity of driving licenses issued by Armenia and other countries where Russian is not an official language. A Russian law which took effect on June 1 banned foreign nationals with driving licenses issued by their home countries from working as drivers in Russia. The State Duma, the Russian lower house of parliament, passed last week another law which waived the restriction for citizens of those countries, including EEU members Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, where the Russian language has an official status. Marukian said that the Russian laws run counter to EEU regulations on a common labor market set up by the bloc's member states. The EEU's executive body has reportedly given the same assessment, telling Moscow to scrap the ban on Armenian driving licenses. Reacting to Marukian's statements, HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov said late on Thursday: "If there are political forces that agitate for the exit from the EEU, they had better come up with concrete alternatives and facts, rather than speak on the emotional plane." Sharmazanov claimed that the Sarkisian administration's controversial decision to join the EEU was based on "clear calculations as to what our farmers, investors, tourism sector and the economy [as a whole] will gain." He said that the Armenian economy has already benefited from better access to the Russian and other ex-Soviet markets. "We have increased our exports by 23 percent [in 2017] and a large part of them went to EEU countries," Sharmazanov told reporters. "The number of tourists [visiting Armenia] has gone up by about 30 percent. We must not make political statements without serious corroborations." Sarkisian unexpectedly announced his decision to seek membership in the EEU in September 2013 shortly after Armenia and the European Union completed negotiations on a far-reaching Association Agreement. The foreign policy U-turn, which scuttled the planned deal with the EU, was widely attributed to Russian pressure. Marukian's stance on the EEU has not yet been officially backed by Yelk's leadership. The bloc consisting of three opposition parties holds 9 seats in Armenia's 105-member parliament. U.S. Watchdog Urges Baku To Free Russian-Israeli Blogger July 21, 2017 Azerbaijan -- Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin is escorted upon his landing in Baku after being extradicted from Belarus to Azerbaijan, February 7, 2017 The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based watchdog, has again called for the immediate release of Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin, who has been imprisoned in Azerbaijan for his visits to Nagorno-Karabakh. "Aleksandr Lapshin should not be in jail for traveling to a disputed region," the CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, Nina Ognianova, said after an Azerbaijani court sentenced Lapshin to three years in prison on Thursday. "We call on authorities in Baku not to contest the journalist's appeal and to release him unconditionally," a CPJ statement quoted her as saying. The court ruled that Lapshin illegally crossed Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders when he travelled to Karabakh via Armenia in 2011 and 2012. But it cleared him of making "public appeals against the state," a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison in Azerbaijan. The 40-year-old blogger, who has Israeli, Russian and Ukrainian citizenships, was detained in Belarus's capital Minsk on an Azerbaijani arrest warrant last December. The Belarusian authorities extradited him to Azerbaijan in February, prompting strong criticism from Armenia and Russia. The CPJ demanded Lapshin's release shortly before the extradition. "Writers should never be imprisoned for expressing their views," it said at the time. Azerbaijan has repeatedly rejected the international criticism. Meanwhile, the Russian Justice Ministry said on Friday that it is ready to seek Lapshin's extradition to Russia if he expresses such a desire. Russia's human rights ombudsperson, Tatyana Moskalkova, said for her part that talks on the blogger's handover to Moscow have already begun. She did not elaborate. Armenian IT Growth Hits Record High July 21, 2017 . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian visits the offices of a new IT company in Yerevan, 17Jun2017. The rapid growth of Armenia's information technology (IT) sector employing thousands of engineers accelerated to 38.2 percent last, according to government data. The tech industry had already expanded by an average of over 20 percent annually in the previous decade, making it the fastest-growing sector of the Armenian economy. According to government estimates, the country's 500 or so mostly small and medium-sized IT firms earned over $550 million in combined revenue in 2015. The sector is dominated by the Armenian branches of U.S. tech giants like as Synopsys, National Instruments, Mentor Graphics and VMware. But its steady expansion is also increasingly driven by homegrown Armenian companies. Armenia - Prime Minister Karen Karapetian visits the offices of the Armenian tech company PicsArt in Yerevan, 24Mar2017. The most successful of these startups is PicsArt, one of the world's leading mobile photo editing and sharing applications. The company now has more than 350 employees in Armenia and boasts 90 million active monthly users worldwide. Another, smaller startup founded in 2013 attracted $5 million in funding from two U.S. venture capital firms earlier this year. The company called Teamable develops special software used by businesses for hiring skilled workers. Like PicsArt, Teamable has offices not only in Yerevan but also in San Francisco. Another Armenian firm, SoloLearn, won this month the Grand Prize of Facebook's annual "Apps of the Year" event, which attracted 900 submissions from 87 countries. SoloLearn offers a free online app for people interested in learning computer programming. Karen Vartanian, chairman of Armenia's Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), stressed the growing importance of such startups. "Our local products are increasingly emerging and proving a success in the international market," he told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). Vahan Shakarian, the executive director of the Yerevan-based company Technology and Science Dynamics manufacturing smartphones and tablet computers, said the sector's has been rapidly developing because it is export-oriented. He also cautioned: "Booms are possible in economics. They key thing is to at least stay at the same level after they are over. It's quite a challenge." Armenia - Children at the Gyumri branch of the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, 13May2016. For Vartanian, the key challenge is a continuing lack of skilled IT personnel in Armenia. "Our growth is now stunted by a serious shortage of personnel," he said. "The education system is in tatters." Industry executives have long complained about the inadequate professional level of many graduates of IT departments of Armenia universities. According to their estimates, there are now between 2,000 and 4,000 job vacancies in the sector employing about 15,000 people. Successive Armenian governments have pledged to tackle this problem. Vartanian insisted, however, that there is still no "comprehensive, strategic cooperation" on the matter between the authorities and IT companies. In January, Prime Minister Karen Karapetian met with a team of government officials and tech executives that proposed a wide-ranging reform of engineering education in Armenia. One of those executives said only half of 1,300 IT students graduating from Armenian universities each year are qualified enough to work in the sector without undergoing further training. Press Review July 21, 2017 "Zhoghovurd" condemns the judges presiding over the ongoing three trials of radical opposition members accused of plotting or attempting armed revolts against Armenia's leadership. The paper claims that instead of administering justice they are helping the authorities to take "political revenge." It also accuses the judges of acting on government orders to create "inhuman conditions" for the defendants. In an interview with "Aravot," the parliamentary leader of the ruling Republican Party (HHK), Vahram Baghdasarian, downplays the significance of Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin's calls for Armenia to adopt Russian as its second official language. "The Russian Duma speaker was not aware that students in Armenia's schools are taught the Russian language from the second grade," says Baghdasarian. "There is no issue of making Russian a state language in Armenia," he adds. "The [Armenian] language is our national value. There can be only one official language in the Republic of Armenia: Armenian. This is our position, which was presented by us and accepted by our Russian partners." Baghdasarian goes on to dismiss calls by a leader of the opposition Yelk alliance, Edmon Marukian, for Armenia's withdrawal from the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). "We cannot harm a family that was created with great difficulties," he says. "We have made a lot of progress in that family and must stick with it." "Haykakan Zhamanak" reports that the Armenian government on Thursday granted tax breaks to a private agricultural firm whose shareholders include two sons of Vartan Harutiunian, the head of the State Revenue Committee (SRC). Each of them holds a 17 percent stake in the company called Green Farmer. The latter has pledged to invest more than $2 million in new fruit orchards to be created in Armenia's Ararat province. "Once again, the government is giving privileges to a company belonging to relatives of a high-ranking official," complains the paper. (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