Tuesday, Market Traders In Yerevan Protest Against New Tax Rules . Naira Bulghadarian . Astghik Bedevian Armenia -- Market traders demonstrate in Yerevan, 31Oct2017. Several dozen market traders rallied outside the Armenian parliament on Tuesday to protest against new government rules that require them to pay more taxes. The traders mainly selling clothing at open-air markets in Yerevan have paid fixed monthly taxes until now. Citing Armenia's new Tax Code, the State Revenue Committee (SRC) informed them recently that they will now be taxed under a different mechanism that will measure their business turnovers. For that purpose, the government agency has introduced standard accounting rules and other extra paperwork for them. The small business owners gathered outside the parliament building in Yerevan after a series of meetings with SRC officials that attempted to address their concerns. They insisted that the new rules are too cumbersome and they cannot afford paying more taxes as a result. "I would have to hire an accountant to write all that stuff," one of them told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). The SRC chief, Vartan Harutiunian, dismissed these complaints, accusing the protesters of trying to evade taxes. Harutiunian claimed that they have rejected SRC offers to provide them with free accounting services. "Everyone must pay taxes in a manner defined by the law," he told reporters inside the parliament building. Armenia - Vartan Harutiunian, head of the State Revenue Committee, speaks at an Armenian parliament committee in Yerevan, 27Jun2017. Harutiunian also claimed that the traders' discontent is fomented by unnamed well-to-do individuals. He did not name any of them. He only made clear that he did not refer to Gagik Tsarukian, one of the country's richest men who owns a market where most of the protesting traders sell goods. A figure close to Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, Harutiunian pledged to crack down on widespread tax evasion in Armenia after he was named to run the SRC one year ago. The SRC reported a nearly 10 percent increase in various taxes collected in the first nine months of this year. In Harutiunian's words, large companies accounted for as much as 85 percent of the government's tax revenue. He asserted that tax fraud is now more widespread in retail trade than among wholesale trading firms. The SRC chief has made no secret of his and his family's business interests. In particular, his two young sons are major shareholders in a new agribusiness firm that was granted import tax breaks by the government earlier this. Harutiunian angrily denied journalists' suggestions that this amounts to a conflict of interests. "My sons are building greenhouses and fruit gardens," he said. "Why shouldn't they? Don't they have a right to live in this country?" Defense Minister Again Denies Draft Evasion . Tatevik Lazarian Armenia - Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian speaks to reporters in Yerevan, 31Oct2017. Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian urged Armenian media on Tuesday to stop questioning his past military service, reiterating that he had never evaded conscription. The issue came under the spotlight during last week's parliamentary debates on a Defense Ministry bill that will essentially abolish draft deferments enjoyed by male students of state-run universities. Opposition lawmakers who voted against the bill said that the authorities must first ensure that senior government officials and their relatives are no longer able to wriggle out of the two-year service. Some of those lawmakers as well as media outlets critical of the Armenian government specifically cast doubt on official records showing that Sargsian technically served in the armed forces in 2000-2003 when he was an assistant to then Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian. The wife of Sargsian's predecessor Seyran Ohanian added to the controversy over the weekend, attacking an unnamed "high-ranking official" who evaded draft in the 1990s.Ruzanna Khachatrian's claim was widely construed as reference to the current minister who replaced her husband one year ago. An Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman responded on Monday by implicitly warning that Khachatrian could risk being held accountable for slander and "false denunciation." Khachatrian doubled down on her attacks later on Monday, however. In another cryptic Facebook post, she claimed that with his potbellied physique the official in question resembles a "woman who is seven or eight months pregnant" and "his lips are like Kim Kardashian's lips." Sargsian would not say on Tuesday when he thinks Ohanian's wife referred to him. "I don't know," he told reporters. "I guess you should ask her." "Why don't you close this topic?" the 42-year-old minister went on. "I repeat that I served in the armed forces in a manner defined by the law and I'm very proud of that. I don't blame those people who don't realize that there are different types of military service and that the proposed legislation opens up such opportunities for many young people." "I think that our discourse has to change and you should play a role in changing it," he said. Armenian Military Inaugurates U.S.-Funded Facility Armenia - U.S. Brigadier General Dawne Deskins (C) and a senior Armenian military official inaugurate a newly renovated training center of the Armenian army, 31Oct2017. Senior Armenian and U.S. military officials inaugurated on Tuesday the newly renovated training center of an Armenian army brigade that contributes troops to NATO-led missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo. The main three-story building of the Zar Military Training Facility has been refurbished and equipped as part of the first stage of the renovation mostly financed by the United States. Speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony held there, Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian and Brigadier General Dawne Deskins of the U.S. military's European Command hailed the development as another milestone in U.S.-Armenian defense cooperation. Sargsian said that the center will be further expanded and modernized in the coming years. The reconstruction work was officially launched in March this year in the presence of Sargsian, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills and high-ranking officers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Armenian army's Peacekeeping Brigade has received considerable financial and technical assistance from the U.S. and other NATO member states since it was set up in the early 2000s. NATO assigned a higher degree of combat readiness and interoperability to the brigade after monitoring a four-day exercise held by it at Zar in 2015. More than 130 soldiers of the brigade are currently deployed in Kosovo, Afghanistan as well as Lebanon. U.S. - Armenian soldiers are trained at a Kansas National Guard facility in Salina in July 2017. "We greatly appreciate Armenia's participation in international peacekeeping operations and NATO-led and other multinational exercises," U.S. President Donald Trump said in a September 21 letter to his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian. Armenia plans to join more peacekeeping missions abroad with specialized medical and demining units in the near future. They will undergo U.S. training before such deployment. In October 2016, Sargsian and Mills inaugurated a new paramedic school of the Armenian armed forces. U.S. military instructors trained the first group of Armenian teaching personnel for the school in August 2015. Mills said in July Armenia's military and political alliance with Russia does not prevent it from forging closer security ties with the U.S. "The cooperation between the United States and Armenia in this area has moved forward and deepened in recent years," he said. Press Review "Zhamanak" says that Monday's shock hostage taking at a kindergarten in the town of Armavir was a consequence of the exiting "social-psychological atmosphere" in Armenia which the paper blames on the increased number of suicides. "Out of desperation, people see violence as a solution because they see no other ways out," it claims. "The more we speak of violence, pass laws aimed at preventing violence, open criminal cases as part of a fight against violence, set up non-governmental organizations, build shelter for victims of violence, the more violence occurs," writes "Hraparak." The paper says that the Armavir incident only underlined the urgency of passing a law against violence that has been drafted by the Armenian Ministry of Justice. "Zhoghovurd" speculates that the signing of Armenia's Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the European Union, widely expected during an EU summit in November 24, is still not a forgone conclusion. "The thing is that Serzh Sarkisian is going to leave for Russia on November 15 on a working visit during which he will participate in the opening of Armenian Culture Days in Moscow," says the paper. "That means he will be in Moscow before the [EU] summit in Brussels, presumably to ascertain some issues." "Zhoghovurd" notes that Sarkisian announced his unexpected decision to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union at the expense of Armenia's Association Agreement with the EU right after a September 2013 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The alternative deal with the EU might be scuttled in a similar fashion, it says. (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