RFE/RL Armenian Report – 01/16/2019

                                        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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Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS