Wednesday,
Armenian, Georgian Leaders Hold ‘Informal’ Talks
Georgia - Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze (R) and his Armenian counterpart
Nikol Pashiian meet in Bolnisi, .
The prime ministers of Armenia and Georgia met on Tuesday for what they called
“informal” talks.
The meeting between Nikol Pashinian and Mamuka Bakhtadze took place in Bolnisi,
a Georgian town located about 30 kilometers from the Armenian border. Few of
its details were made public afterwards.
Pashinian’s office said he “stressed the importance of Armenian-Georgian
relations in all areas.” In a separate Facebook post, the Armenian leader said
the talks were “very cordial” and described Bakhtadze as “my friend.”
“We decided to hold a Georgian-Armenian business forum in [the Armenian town
of] Dilijan in May,” added Pashinian.
A short statement by the Georgian government said the two leaders discussed
“good-neighborly relations” between the two neighboring states and expressed
readiness to “continue fruitful cooperation in the future.”
Pashinian characterized Georgian-Armenian ties as “brilliant” after meeting
with Bakhtadze in Yerevan in September. He said they need to be reinforced by
closer commercial links. The Armenian and Georgian governments will strive to
help increase the annual volume of bilateral trade to $1 billion within the
next few years, he declared.
According to Armenian government data, Georgian-Armenian trade stood at a
modest $122 million in January-November 2018.
Longtime Dashnaktsutyun Leader Resigns
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - Hrant Markarian, a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation,
attends a conference in Yerevan, 9 December 2015.
Hrant Markarian, the long-serving top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), announced his resignation on Wednesday more than
one month after the party’s failure to win any seats in Armenia’s new
parliament.
Markarian made the announcement at the start of a Dashnaktsutyun congress held
in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The weeklong gathering is attended by representatives of the party’s chapters
in Armenia and other countries around the world having sizable Armenian
communities. They are due to debate its new strategy following last spring’s
“velvet revolution” that radically reshaped the Armenian political scene. The
congress will also elect Dashnaktsutyun’s new main decision-making body, the
Bureau.
Markarian has effectively headed the Bureau since 2000. He said on Wednesday
that he will not seek reelection to the body.
“We have reached a point where we need to regroup,” he told the congress
delegates. “That regrouping also requires certain changes, and I propose to
start the first change from myself.”
Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian awards a medal to Hrant Markarian, a leader
of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, in Yerevan, 20Sep2016.
Markarian reportedly came under renewed fire from dissident Dashnaktsutyun
figures in Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora after the party’s poor showing in
last month’s snap parliamentary elections. They were said to have claimed that
Dashnaktsutyun paid the price for its close ties with the former Armenian
government ousted in the revolution.
Markarian blasted the “inner-party opposition” in his speech, saying that it
has breached the 128-year-old nationalist party’s “traditions” and “moral
concepts.” But he did not name any of his detractors.
The Iranian-born veteran politician also hit out at the current government of
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, saying that it “doesn’t reflect the mood of the
popular movement”
“There is an extremely high risk of a merger of the executive and legislative
branches and a strengthening of one-man rule,” he claimed. “With their
inexperience, bad governance and poor cadres, the authorities could set the
country several years back from its normal development.”
Dashnaktsutyun should therefore aim for removing Pashinian and his political
team from power in the next general elections, added Markarian.
Armenia - Armen Rustamian, a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation,
speaks at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, November 26, 2018.
Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Armen Rustamian, similarly stated in November
that Pashinian may be trying to “replace old political and economic monopolies
with new ones.”
Dashnaktsutyun joined a coalition government formed by Serzh Sarkisian
immediately after he was controversially elected president in 2008. It pulled
out of the government a year later in protest against Sarkisian’s policy of
rapprochement with Turkey. It reached another power-sharing deal with the
former president in 2016.
The party, which remains influential in the Diaspora communities in the Middle
East, the United States and France, cut a similar deal with Pashinian shortly
after he came to power in May. The popular prime minister fired his
Dashnaktsutyun-affiliated ministers in October, accusing their party of
secretly collaborating with Sarkisian’s Republican Party.
Dashnaktsutyun won less than 4 percent of the vote in the December 9 elections,
failing to clear the 5 percent threshold to enter the parliament.
Justice Ministry Seeks To Protect Embattled Lawyers
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia - Angry residents of Echmiadzin block a highway in protest against a
Yerevan court's decision to release retired General Manvel Grigorian from
pretrial detention, January 12, 2019.
Armenia’s Justice Ministry and national bar association have drafted a bill
that would make it a crime to insult lawyers or threaten them and their family
members with violence.
The move results from angry public reactions to high-profile court cases
involving former senior government and military officials accused of
corruption. They have also targeted lawyers representing some of those former
officials, including Manvel Grigorian, a retired army general prosecuted on
corruption charges.
Last week one of Grigorian’s lawyers, Arsen Mkrtchian, was confronted outside a
court in Yerevan by protesters furious with his client’s recent release from
pretrial detention. Some of those protesters verbally abused Mkrtchian and spat
at his car.
Armenia’s Chamber of Advocates condemned the incident and demanded stronger
government protection of its members dealing with sensitive criminal cases. The
chairman of the bar association, Ara Zohrabian, said earlier this week that
failure to do so would put lawyers at risk of serious physical attacks.
The resulting bill drafted by the Justice Ministry and the Chamber of Advocates
calls for criminalizing slander, insults and threats voiced against lawyers.
All forms of libel were decriminalized in Armenia about a decade ago.
Not all Armenian lawyers agree with the proposed bill. Yervand Varosian, a
prominent trial attorney, considers it a potential threat to the freedom of
expression in the country.
“Why is it necessary to criminalize slander in the case of lawyers but not
journalists?” Varosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on Wednesday. “Why don’t
we also protect doctors, prosecutors, investigators, politicians or government
officials [in the same fashion?]”
Varosian said that relevant authorities should instead “talk and explain things
to the society.” “The lawyers must be in a situation where the society
understands their role and importance,” he added.
Armenian judges dealing with ongoing corruption cases have also faced such
angry reactions. Late last month, the national Union of Judges condemned what
it called growing “hate speech” against some of its members. The union urged
Armenian authorities, political and civic groups as well as ordinary citizens
to refrain from demanding explanations for court rulings, discrediting judges
or exerting any pressure on them.
Grigorian’s release from jail earlier in December was the result of one such
ruling. It provoked angry street protests in the town of Echmiadzin where the
disgraced general lived before being arrested in June. The protests resumed
late last week, with several dozen people blocking a highway leading from
Yerevan to Echmiadzin. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Tuesday warned them
againstresorting to more such blockages.
Armenian, Azeri FMs Meet Again
• Emil Danielyan
France - The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers and the co-chairs of
the OSCE Minsk Group pose for a photograph in Paris, .
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan acknowledged the need for
“concrete measures to prepare the populations for peace” when they held fresh
talks in Paris on Wednesday, according to international mediators.
Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov met in the presence of the U.S.,
Russian and French mediators co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group for the fourth
time in six months.
The press services of both ministers described the meeting, which lasted for
more than four hours, as “useful.” They said the two sides will hold more
“results-oriented” negotiations on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“The Ministers discussed a wide range of issues related to the settlement of
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and agreed upon the necessity of taking concrete
measures to prepare the populations for peace,” read a separate statement
released by the Minsk Group co-chairs.
“During the meetings, the Co-Chairs reviewed with the Ministers key principles
and parameters for the current phase of the negotiation process,” said the
statement.
They also discussed a possible meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, it said, adding that such a
summit could “give a strong impulse to the dynamic of negotiations.”
Aliyev and Pashinian spoke to each other for the first time on the sidelines of
a summit of former Soviet republics held in Tajikistan in September. There has
been a significant decrease in ceasefire violations around Karabakh and along
the Armenian-Azerbaijani border since then.
The two leaders talked again during another ex-Soviet summit that took place in
Russia in early December. Aliyev said afterwards that the year 2019 will see a
“new impetus” to the Karabakh peace process.
In virtually identical statements released after the Paris talks, the Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreign ministries confirmed that Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanian
discussed ways of preparing their populations for a peaceful settlement as well
as achieving “security and sustainable regional development.” But they gave no
details.
The mediators said in this regard that they “underlined the importance of
possible mutually beneficial initiatives designed to fulfill the economic
potential of the region.” They did not elaborate on those initiatives, saying
instead that they plan to meet with Pashinian and Aliyev “in the near future.”
Despite the continuing positive tone of statements made by Yerevan and Baku it
remains unclear whether the conflicting parties narrowed their differences on
how to end the protracted conflict.
Press Review
Armenia -- Newspapers for press review illustration, Yerevan, 12Jul2016
“Aravot” says that for all the criticism of its many young and inexperienced
members the new Armenian parliament is better than the previous ones. “The
number of oligarchs [in the parliament] has drastically decreased while that of
women, young people and scholars has gone up,” argues the paper. It is
particularly enthusiastic about the newly elected parliamentarians who are too
young to remember the Soviet times.
“Granted, there is [Gagik Tsarukian’s] Prosperous Armenia Party in the National
Assembly, which represents the old political system,” “Aravot” goes on. “There
are likeable people, including Tsarukian, in that party. But let us acknowledge
that the situation where a rich person keeps a party and decides everything
single-handedly based on his interests is simply outdated.”
“Hraparak” reacts to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s statement to the effect
that critics of the disgraced General Manvel Grigorian or other groups of the
population must not block streets or roads in protest against something.
Pashinian said this week that they do not have a popular mandate to take such
actions at will because Armenians now have a democratically elected government
that has different obligations to them. The paper questions Pashinian’s
“contentious” logic, citing counterarguments that Pashinian and his team
themselves heavily relied on street blockades when they toppled the country’s
former government and came to power last year.
“Zhamanak” says that the presidents of Russia and other “Eurasian” countries
such as Belarus and Kazakhstan have congratulated Pashinian on being
reappointed as Armenia’s prime minister on Monday. They did not send
congratulatory messages after Pashinian’s My Step alliance won the December 9
parliamentary elections. “Does this testify to a change in their attitudes
towards Armenia?” writes the paper. “Of course not. It’s just that the absence
of congratulations in this case (i.e., Pashinian’s reappointment) would have
testified to a conflict-like situation for which the Eurasian Economic Union
member statements would have been responsible … So the congratulations rather
reflect the existing problems than their resolution, and Yerevan should be
better prepared for difficult discussions than friendly treatment by the EEU.”
(Sargis Harutyunyan)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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