Thursday, January 25, 2017 Next Armenian PM To Run National Security Body . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian holds a meeting with Prime Minister Karen Karapetian (L) and other state officials in Yerevan, 27Oct2017. The next Armenian prime minister will head a Security Council tasked with formulating the country's policy on national defense, according to a government bill approved on Thursday. The bill drafted by the Justice Ministry stems from Armenia's transformation into a parliamentary republic which will be completed when President Serzh Sarkisian serves out his final term on April 9. The parliamentary system of government will make the prime minister, not the president of the republic, the commander-in-chief of the Armenian Armed Forces. The bill approved by Prime Minister Karen Karapetian's cabinet underlines the next premier's status as the country's most powerful official. The Security Council to be chaired by them will be more powerful than a similar presidential body currently advising Sarkisian on national security. It will comprise the deputy prime ministers, the ministers of defense and foreign affairs, the heads of Armenia's police and National Security Service and the chief of the Armenian army's General Staff. Significantly, Armenia's next president as well the parliament speaker and the Constitutional Court chairman will not sit on the council. Under the bill, the council will be empowered to determine "the main directions of defense policy." It will act in a more advisory capacity on broader security matters. The Armenian parliament, which is controlled by the ruling Republican Party (HHK), will almost certainly pass the bill before the end of Sarkisian's decade-long presidency. The outgoing president has still not publicly clarified whether he will become prime minister in April. He has not ruled out such a possibility. Karabakh Reports Azeri Incursion Attempt . Naira Bulghadarian Nagorno-Karabakh - An Armenian soldier shoots during a military exercise, 20Nov2015. Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian-backed military claimed to have thwarted an Azerbaijani commando raid on its frontline positions early on Thursday, the first such incident reported by it in the last seven months. In a statement, the Defense Army said that shortly after midnight an Azerbaijani "reconnaissance and sabotage group" was spotted by its forces while attempting to attack one of its outposts in Karabakh's southeastern Martuni district. "As a result of preventive measures, the Azerbaijani special forces were pushed back," said the statement. "According to preliminary data, the enemy suffered casualties. Details are being clarified." A senior aide to Bako Sahakian, the Karabakh president, said no Karabakh Armenian soldiers were killed or wounded as a result. "No other extraordinary incident has occurred since then," Davit Babayan told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry was quick to deny the claim, however. According to the APA news agency, it said that Azerbaijani forces observed the ceasefire along the "line of contact" around Karabakh and did not suffer any casualties there overnight. The authorities in Stepanakert alleged the attempted Azerbaijani attack hours before a small team of officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitored the ceasefire regime at another section of the frontline lying just north of Karabakh. No truce violations were reported from that area. The longtime head of the OSCE monitoring mission, Andrzej Kasprzyk, also took part in the regular monitoring. Kasprzyk met with Karabakh Armenian leaders in Stepanakert earlier this week. The Karabakh army had previously reported attempted Azerbaijani incursions in June and February last year. At least five Azerbaijani soldiers were shot dead in front of a Karabakh Armenian position in the Martuni district in February 2017. They were detected by night-vision surveillance devices before crossing the frontline. Tensions on the frontlines eased considerably in the second half of 2017 amid the resumption of high-level Armenian-Azerbaijani peace negotiations. Foreign Ministers Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan held fresh talks in Poland as recently as on January 18. Mammadyarov described them as "positive." One of Nalbandian's deputies, Shavarsh Kocharian, suggested on Thursday that the overnight incident reported by Stepanakert may be connected with the talks. He said Baku is still reluctant to agree to the expansion of Kasprzyk's team which is strongly advocated by international mediators and Yerevan. Russian Official Upbeat On Key Transport Deal With Georgia Switzerland -- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin speaks to journalists in Geneva, 08Jun2010. A high-ranking Russian diplomat has sounded optimistic about the opening in the near future of new transport corridors between Georgia and Russia that would facilitate cargo shipments to and from Armenia. Most of Russian-Armenian trade is currently carried out through the sole Russian-Georgian border crossing at Upper Lars. Traffic along that mountainous road is frequently blocked by blizzards in winter months. The two other roads connecting Georgia and Russia pass through the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They were closed even before the 2008 Russian-Georgian war and Moscow's ensuing recognition of both regions as independent states. In 2011, Moscow and Tbilisi agreed to hire a Swiss company to operate special customs checkpoints to be set up on the administrative boundaries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Despite their lingering political disagreements, the two sides seem to have slowly but steadily made progress towards the implementation of that agreement. The Georgian government signed a relevant contract with the Swiss company, SGS, on December 19. In an interview with the Moscow daily "Kommersant" published on Thursday, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said Moscow will likely follow suit "in the coming months." "After that the agreement will work," Karasin said. It will give "powerful impetus" to regional trade, he said. Karasin, who is Russia's top negotiator in regular contacts with Georgian officials, confirmed that Armenia is keenly interested in such an arrangement and has asked the Russians to work it out with Georgia. "But in this case, we are talking about a purely bilateral agreement between Russia and Georgia concluded with Swiss mediation," added the diplomat. Armenian leaders have repeatedly expressed hope that the 2011 Russian-Georgian deal will be implemented. President Serzh Sarkisian most probably discussed the matter with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili when he visited Tbilisi late last month. Kvirikashvili said earlier in December that his government is ready to allow Armenia as well as Turkey and other countries to use, in case of a "force majeure situation," the road passing through South Ossetia. European Court Reports Sharp Drop In Appeals From Armenia FRANCE -- The building of the European Court of Human Rights n Strasbourg, France, The number of appeals filed by Armenians in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) fell by more than half last year, the Strasbourg-based tribunal said on Thursday. "For Armenia, 356 new applications were received by the Court, less than 50 percent as compared to 753 new applications in 2016," the ECHR said in an annual report presented by its president, Guido Raimondi, at a news conference. The sharp drop contrasts with a 19 percent rise in applications received by the ECHR from citizens of all Council of Europe member states. They totaled 63,350 in 2017. Armenia fell under the European court's jurisdiction when it joined the Council of Europe in 2001. Its government lost the first case in Strasbourg in 2007. The ECHR has ruled against various Armenian government, judicial and law-enforcement bodies on 79 occasions since then, costing them about 1 million euros ($1.2 million) in damages. "The highest number of violations related to the right to a fair trial, and right to liberty and security," says its report. The ECHR handed down 11 rulings against the Armenian state in 2017. "For Armenia, there are 1,819 applications pending # Armenia is thus within the top-ten states by the number of pending applications," it said. The large number of lawsuits reflects a lack of judicial independence and widespread corruption among law-enforcement officers and judges in Armenia. Armenian courts are still mistrusted by many citizens despite having undergone frequent structural changes in the last two decades. They rarely acquit criminal suspects and usually allow their pre-trial arrests sought by prosecutors. Armenia's former Prosecutor-General Gevorg Kostanian warned last year that law-enforcement authorities' long-running practice of routinely keeping suspects in custody may put them at odds with the ECHR. Kostanian, who now represents Armenia in the ECHR, said that the Strasbourg-based court has adopted stricter requirements for pre-trial arrests. Press Review Commenting to President Serzh Sarkisian's latest trip to Strasbourg, "Aravot" says the Council of Europe is not the best place for publicly discussing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "The Council of Europe is not a platform for resolving conflicts," writes the paper. "The mission of that organization is to ensure consolidation and cooperation around European values. That is not quite working out right now, including due to the organization's internal problems # But the main reason is that many countries, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, start settling scores during sessions of its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE). Of course, that is usually initiated by the Azerbaijani delegation, which is what happened yesterday." "Zhamanak" comments on Sarkisian's speech delivered at the PACE. "On one hand, Sarkisian aimed covert accusations at the PACE, reminding it of the disgrace of [Azerbaijani] caviar diplomacy and some rulings handed by the European Courts of Human Rights having to do with the Karabakh conflict," says the paper. At the same time, it says, Sarkisian told the PACE that he managed to bring Armenia closer to the European Union even after Yerevan joined the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). "Hraparak" says that Sarkisian's visit to France coincided with Prime Minister Karen Karapetian's participation in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Both men have held many meetings in the last few days. "It's hard to tell what exactly Armenia will gain from those meetings," comments the paper. "But at any rate, it is nice to see that we are not a country pushed into a Caucasus impasse and burdened by the intractable Karabakh conflict and that our leaders meet and speak to world leaders on equal terms." "Zhoghovurd" reports that Russia has delivered a fresh batch of military equipment to Azerbaijan. The paper speculates that Russian-Azerbaijani military cooperation "gained new momentum" after Armenia signed the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the EU in November. It calls the latest shipment of Russian weapons to Baku "yet another indirect reaction to Armenian-European cooperation" from Moscow. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2018 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org