Friday, March 01, 2019 Aliyev, Pashinian To Meet Again March 01, 2019 Switzerland - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L) and Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev meet in Davos, January 22, 2019. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have agreed to meet soon for further talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, international mediators said on Friday. The U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group made the announcement in a joint statement issued more than a week after they held talks with Pashinian and Aliyev in Yerevan and Baku. They said they discussed “preparations for a meeting of the leaders in the near future, including possible topics for discussion.” “The leaders accepted the Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ proposal to meet soon under their auspices,” added the statement. It gave no dates. Pashinian’s most recent meeting with Aliyev took place on January 22 on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It came a week after fresh negotiations held by the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Paris. According to the mediators, the ministers acknowledged the need for “taking concrete measures to prepare the populations for peace.” Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) meets with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group in Yerevan, February 20, 2019. Visiting neighboring Iran this week, Pashinian announced that another Armenian-Azerbaijani summit will likely be held “soon.” “In essence, it is going to be a meeting without an agenda,” he told members of the Armenian community of Tehran. Pashinian sounded pessimistic about chances of decisive progress towards a Karabakh settlement. He again declared that he cannot “speak on behalf of Karabakh” in the negotiating process. The Armenian leader also said that Azerbaijan, not Armenia, must be the first to tell the international community whether it is prepared for a compromise peace accord because it regularly threatens a military solution to the Karabakh conflict. In what may have been a related development, the influential head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS), Artur Vanetsian, seemed to rule out on Thursday major concessions to Baku. Vanetsian made a point of travelling, together with Karabakh President Bako Sahakian, to a formerly Azerbaijani-populated area south of Karabakh. He attended a meeting of Karabakh officials that discussed their plans to build a new settlement and cultivate more agricultural land in the area bordering Iran. “As a result of implementing this project we will send a clear message to the Armenian people and the outside world to the effect that we do not intend to give back a single inch of land,” Vanetsian said at that meeting. Pashinian similarly stated on January 30 that the Armenian side will not agree to make territorial concessions Azerbaijan in return for mere peace in the region. “We can’t even discuss the lands-for-peace formula,” he said. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry criticized those remarks, saying that “withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories” has long been at the heart of the peace process mediated by the United States, Russia and France. Over the past decade, the mediating powers have advanced a framework accord calling for the liberation of virtually all districts around Karabakh that were occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war. In return, Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population would determine the disputed territory’s internationally recognized status in a future referendum. Ex-Mayor Freed After Hefty Payment March 01, 2019 Armenia -The Investigative Committee headquarters in Yerevan. The former longtime mayor of the Armenian town of Hrazdan has been released from custody after agreeing to return over 102 million drams ($210,000) in public funds which he had allegedly embezzled while in office. Aram Danielian was arrested on Tuesday in connection with what law-enforcement authorities described as misuse of land and property taxes collected by the Hrazdan municipality in 2015-2018. The former head of a municipality division tasked with tax collection was also arrested on suspicion of embezzling the money. Through his lawyer, Danielian denied any wrongdoing on Wednesday. The lawyer, Aleksandr Sirunian, said his client could only be faulted for allowing other local officials to waste or pocket the collected taxes. Armenia’s Investigative Committee announced on Friday that Danielian “accepted his guilt,” “recovered the 102.2 million-dram damage inflicted on the state,” and was set free as a result of that on Thursday. “The investigation is continuing,” it said in a statement. The law-enforcement agency did not specify whether it will bring criminal charges against the other suspect. A member of former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party, Danielian ran the town located 45 kilometers north of Yerevan for over 15 years. He resigned in July two months after Sarkisian was ousted from power during the “velvet revolution” led by Nikol Pashinian, Armenia’s current prime minister. Thousands Mark 2008 Violence Anniversary In Yerevan March 01, 2019 • Karlen Aslanian Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian leads a demonstration on the 11th anniversary of deadly post-election violence in Yerevan, March 1, 2019. Thousands of people led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian marched through central Yerevan on Friday to mark the 11th anniversary of the breakup of post-election protests in Armenia’s capital which left ten people dead. The crowd silently walked from the city’s Liberty Square to the site of violent clashes between security forces and opposition protests which broke out on March 1, 2008. Pashinian laid flowers there, as did many other demonstrators. “Today, on March 1, 2019, I want to make it clear that the return to the past is impossible in our country,” Pashinian declared in an address to the nation aired earlier in the day. “Armenia will not return to corruption, political persecutions, political violence and abuse.” Pashinian urged Armenians to join him in paying respects to the victims of the worst street violence in Armenia’s history and “all political killings” committed since the country’s independence. The 2008 unrest resulted from a disputed presidential election which formalized the handover of power from outgoing President Robert Kocharian to his preferred successor, Serzh Sarkisian. The main opposition presidential candidate, Levon Ter-Petrosian, refused to concede defeat, alleging serious fraud. Armenia - Thousands of people mark the 11th anniversary of deadly post-election violence in Yerevan, March 1, 2019. Ter-Petrosian supporters held nonstop rallies in Liberty Square until they were forcibly dispersed by riot police early on March 1, 2008. Thousands of them gathered and barricaded themselves elsewhere in the city center later on that day. Pashinian, then a newspaper editor, was among Ter-Petrosian associates who addressed them there. Eight protesters and two policemen died in ensuing clashes. Citing the violence, Kocharian declared a state of emergency and ordered army units into Yerevan late on March 1, 2008. The former Armenian authorities accused the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition of organizing the “mass disturbances” in a bid to seize power. Dozens of Ter-Petrosian allies, including Pashinian, were jailed on charges strongly denied by them. Armenia’s Special Investigative Service (SIS) completely changed the official version of events shortly last spring’s “velvet revolution” which brought Pashinian to power. It now says that Kocharian illegally used the military against the protesters. Kocharian was arrested in December five months after being charged with overthrowing the constitutional order. The ex-president denies the accusations as politically motivated, alleging a “vendetta” waged by Pashinian. The SIS has also indicted but not arrested three retired Armenian generals. They and Kocharian could go on trial already this spring. Armenia - A police officer lays flowers at an unofficial memorial to the victims of the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan, March 1, 2019. In his statement, Pashinian condemned the former regime for using “illegal force” against the protesters but did not mention Kocharian or any other suspects by name. He read out the names of the ten victims of the bloodshed instead. “The shots fired on the victims of March 1 were targeted at each of us,” he said. Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK), from which Pashinian split in 2013, welcomed the premier’s decision to organize Friday’s march. The party’s deputy chairman, Levon Zurabian, and other senior members participated in it. But Ter-Petrosian himself did not show up. Zurabian hailed the criminal charges brought against Kocharian and the generals. “Everything is clear,” he told reporters. “The constitutional order was overthrown and the army was used against the people.” Unlike the HAK, the two opposition parties represented in the current Armenian parliament, Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright Armenia (LHK), declined to join the Pashinian-led demonstration. Some of their senior representatives accused the premier of using the unrest anniversary for political purposes. The BHK and LHK leaders laid flowers at an unofficial memorial to the March 2008 victims earlier on Friday. Press Review March 01, 2019 “Zhoghovurd” carries a commentary on the 11th anniversary of the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan. The paper says that Armenia’s former authorities “did everything to cover up” the use of lethal force against opposition protesters and its consequences, blaming the bloodshed on Levon Ter-Petrosian and his associates. It welcomes a renewed and very different investigation into those tragic events which began after last year’s “velvet revolution.” “It is imperative to clear up all circumstances and hold the guilty accountable,” it says. “And this must be done in a way that will leave no doubts about the impartiality of judges and investigators [dealing with the case.]” “Aravot” disagrees with those who say that the March 2008 tragedy in Yerevan must not be “politicized.” “That tragedy was a direct consequence of political events and, more precisely, rigged elections,” argues the paper. Having said that, it goes on, all political forces must acknowledge that “the practice of falsifying elections began in 1995” and that “the electoral process was accompanied by violence from that moment on.” “It’s just that [former President Robert] Kocharian went beyond all limits with his trademark brutality and vengefulness,” it says. Lragir.am comments on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest statements on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Visiting Iran, Pashinian said that Armenia will continue to seek international recognition of Karabakh’s right to self-determination and its greater role in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. A senior aide to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev responded by ruling out any change in the current negotiating format. The online publication sees “two ways out of this situation.” “Either the negotiations will be frozen until the parties change their motivation or one of them will blink and cannons will start firing,” it says. (Lilit Harutiunian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org