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    Categories: 2018

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 05/22/2018

                                        Wednesday, 

Armenia Ready For Renewed Talks With Azerbaijan

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia - Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan at a news briefing 
in Yerevan, .

Armenia stands ready to resume peace talks with Azerbaijan without 
preconditions after its new Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s calls for 
Nagorno-Karabakh’s direct involvement in them, the Foreign Ministry in Yerevan 
said on Tuesday.

“It’s not that we are refusing negotiations,” the ministry spokesman, Tigran 
Balayan, told reporters. “As a guarantor of Karabakh’s security, Armenia will 
continue negotiations and say at the same time that Artsakh’s direct 
participation in them is a necessary condition for achieving a lasting and 
balanced peace.”

During a May 9 visit to Stepanakert, Pashinian criticized Baku’s refusal to 
directly negotiate with Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian leadership. “This 
negotiation format cannot be considered full-fledged until one of the parties 
to the conflict, the leadership of Artsakh (Karabakh), participates in it,” he 
said.

The Azerbaijani government rejected Pashinian’s calls, accusing Yerevan of 
creating an additional hurdle to reviving the peace process.

Balayan insisted that the premier’s statement is not a precondition for 
Yerevan’s renewed contacts with Baku.“Our insistence on Artsakh’s participation 
[in Armenian-Azerbaijani talks] is not something new,” he said. “We have for 
years said and will continue to say that. It’s just that the realities have now 
changed … which presupposes Artsakh’s greater involvement in the negotiation 
process.”

“Karabakh is involved in negotiations in one way or another … The problem is 
that Azerbaijan has for years refused to directly negotiate with Karabakh,” 
added the official.

Balayan also said that the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the 
OSCE Minsk Group may visit Yerevan next month for what will be their first 
meeting with Pashinian.

The mediators met with Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in Paris 
on May 15. In a joint statement, they said they discussed with him “modalities 
for moving the peace process forward.”

“Minister Mammadyarov expressed Azerbaijan's readiness to resume active 
negotiations as soon as possible,” read the statement. “The Co-Chairs expect to 
meet with the new Armenian leadership in June.”




Deputy PM Vague On Possible Election Dates

        • Karlen Aslanian

Armenia - First Deputy Prime Minister Ararat Mirzoyan speaks at a cabinet 
meeting in Yerevan, .

First Deputy Prime Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Tuesday refused to speculate 
about possible dates for fresh parliamentary elections sought by Armenia’s new 
government.

“I won’t give any dates now,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). 
“We have said that we are going to prepare the country for pre-term elections. 
Pre-term elections are one of our priorities.”

“But we have to prepare for that,” Mirzoyan said, citing the need to enact the 
kind of amendments to the Armenian Electoral Code that would facilitate the 
proper conduct of the vote.

“We are working day and night to put those conditions in place as soon as 
possible because we realize that having a new political picture in the 
parliament through elections must be the final episode of the systemic change,” 
he said, referring to the Pashinian-led popular uprising that has led to regime 
change in the country.

Pashinian and his political allies control a minority of seats in the current 
National Assembly. The parliament majority remains loyal to former President 
Serzh Sarkisian and his Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). The latter is 
therefore in a position to block the holding of snap elections.

Pashinian said last week that he thinks the polls will be held this year. 
Mirzoyan was more cautious on that score.

“We are now consulting with many experts in order to understand when we may be 
… sufficiently prepared for [the elections,]” said the vice-premier. “Different 
views [on election time frames] are being voiced: from six month to one year. 
But we obviously have deadlines and those elections must not be held in two 
years’ time.”




New Armenian Government To Continue IMF-Backed Reforms


Armenia - Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian (R) meets with Yulia Ustyugova, 
the IMF's resident representative to Armenia, in Yerevan, .

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet will carry on with structural reforms 
that were launched by the previous Armenian government and approved by the 
International Monetary Fund, Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian said on Tuesday.

Janjughazian met with the head of the IMF office in Yerevan, Yulia Ustyugova, 
for the first time since being appointed as minister ten days ago. The Armenian 
Finance Ministry said they reviewed ongoing IMF-approved programs relating to 
taxation and state budgeting policy.

“Atom Janjughazian assured her that the government of Armenia is committed to 
bringing all joint programs and initiatives to a logical conclusion,” read a 
ministry statement. “The minister highly appraised continuing cooperation with 
the International Monetary Fund and stressed the importance of expanding and 
strengthening it.”

The IMF has praised the previous government’s efforts to strengthen fiscal 
discipline through sizable increases in tax revenue and budgetary cost saving. 
Armenia’s state budget deficit shrank from at least 5.2 percent of GDP in 2016 
to 3.3 percent in 2017, according to the Finance Ministry.

A senior IMF official, Hossein Samiei, indicated the fund’s readiness to 
allocate a fresh loan to Armenia at the end of a two-week visit to Yerevan in 
late March. Samiei met with then Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, 
Janjughazian’s predecessor Vartan Aramian and other senior Armenian officials. 
An IMF statement said they held “productive discussions” on the government’s 
economic policies.

Janjughazian, 47, is one of the most experienced technocratic members of the 
new Armenian cabinet. He served as a deputy finance minister and head of the 
Armenian state treasury for nearly two decades preceding his ministerial 
appointment.

Pashinian’s cabinet is expected to submit a comprehensive policy program to the 
parliament next month. So far it has signaled no plans to revise the state 
budget for this year which was drafted by Karapetian’s government.




Jailed Oppositionists Warn Pashinian


Armenia - Varuzhan Avetisian (L), the leader an armed opposition group that 
seized a police station in July 2016, at the start of his trial in Yerevan, 
8Jun2017.

The jailed leaders of a radical opposition group on Tuesday urged Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian to ensure the quick release of their supporters who 
stormed a police station in 2016, warning that their continued imprisonment 
could have “severe consequences” for Armenia.

In an open letter, Zhirayr Sefilian and Varuzhan Avetisian criticized Pashinian 
for his reluctance to pressurize courts and law-enforcement bodies into freeing 
these and other “political prisoners.”

“So far one has been left with the impression that you have washed your hands 
and are urging the political prisoners and other citizens to count on a 
miraculous spiritual and moral transformation of criminal prosecutors and 
judges,” they said.

Sefilian is the top leader of the Founding Parliament movement who was arrested 
in June 2016 and subsequently sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for plotting an 
armed revolt against the government, a charge he strongly denies.

Sefilian’s arrest came less than a month before three dozen Founding Parliament 
members led by Avetisian seized a police base in Yerevan to demand his release 
and then President Serzh Sarkisian’s resignation. The armed group calling 
itself Sasna Tsrer laid down its weapons after a two-week standoff with 
security forces, which left three police officers dead. Its members are 
currently standing three separate trials.


Armenia - Opposition leader Zhirayr Sefilian waves to supporters at the end of 
his trial in Yerevan, 20 March 2018.

Pashinian pledged to seek the release of all “political prisoners” immediately 
after he swept to power in a democratic revolution earlier this month. But he 
made clear that he will use solely legal mechanisms for that purpose.

Pashinian has publicly listed Sefilian but not Avetisian and other jailed 
gunmen among the individuals who he believes were jailed for political reasons. 
He said last week that the Sasna Tsrer case is “a bit different” because of the 
three police casualties. He said it will be resolved as a result of public 
“discussions” that must involve relatives of the three slain policemen.

Avetisian condemned Pashinian’s remarks as “buffoonery” and “false humanism” on 
May 16. He again strongly defended the 2016 attack, saying that casualties are 
inevitable during such “rebellions.”

“If the political prisoners, including the Sasna Tsrer members, remain in jail, 
that will be fraught with severe consequences for our country and the 
revolution,” Avetisian and Sefilian warned in their letter to Pashinian.

“Of course, it is good that you reject in principle ‘telephone’ justice,” they 
said. “But the supremacy of law has a value and meaning only if it serves the 
supremacy of rights. Therefore, while rejecting that illegal option of direct 
control, you can and must use all available legitimate levers of indirect 
leadership to change the atmosphere in the prosecutor’s office and courts … and 
guarantee fair decisions by them.”

The 2016 attack on the Yerevan police base was condemned by the United States 
and the European Union. “We abhor the actions of Sasna Tsrer and others who use 
violence or who threaten to harm others to serve their political agenda,” 
Richard Mills, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, said as recently as in March.




Press Review



“Zhamanak” describes as unprecedented the weekend pledge by the new head of 
Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS), Artur Vanetsian, to expose and hold 
accountable individuals who have embezzled large amounts of public funds. “They 
have spoken about fighting corruption for many years, including at the highest 
[government] level,” writes the paper. “But never before has an NSS chief 
announced very concrete revelations and given very clear timelines. On the 
other hand, such statements should not come as a surprise because there has 
been a revolution in Armenia.”

“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that the Armenian government is supposed to complete 
on July 1 the gradual introduction of a new and controversial pension system 
which began four years ago. The paper notes that the new Labor and Social 
Affairs Minister Mande Tandilian was one of the leaders of a pressure group 
that campaigned against the pension reform from the outset. It believes that 
the new system is essential for Armenia given its aging and shrinking 
population. “The question is whether it must be optional or mandatory and where 
and how payments to pension funds must be accumulated,” it says.

“Aravot” says Tandilian now realizes that “state interests require the 
introduction of that system in one way or another.” The paper says her apparent 
change of heart on the issue is “very natural” and reflects “the new 
government’s sense of responsibility.”

Interviewed by “168 Zham,” Vladimir Yevseyev, a Russian military analyst, 
comments on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s threats to strike “any 
military target” in Armenia from Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. “This is 
what the joint Russian-Armenian military contingent was set up for: to secure 
that section of the [Armenian-Azerbaijani] border and deter Turkey, which has 
gained a foothold in Nakhichevan,” he says. “I can say for certain that given 
the existing Russian-Turkish relations it is hard to imagine threats to Armenia 
emanating from this border section because any provocation against Armenia 
would be regarded as a move against Russia.”

(Tigran Avetisian)

Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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