Thursday,
Pashinian Attends Annual Celebrations In Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (C), Karabakh
President Bako Sahakian (R) and Archbishop Pargev Martirosian leave a newly
built church in Stepanakert, May 9, 2019.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visited Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday to
celebrate the 74th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II and
Karabakh’s main public holiday.
The holiday is dedicated to the May 1992 capture by Karabakh Armenian forces of
Shushi (Shusha), a formerly Azerbaijani-populated strategic town overlooking
Stepanakert. The military operation proved crucial for the Armenian victory in
the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan.
“The liberation of Shushi, the cradle of the Artsakh Armenians, was one of the
most heroic and brilliant pages of our history,” Pashinian said in a statement
issued on the occasion.
Thursday’s celebrations began with hundreds of people led by Pashinian and Bako
Sahakian, the Karabakh president, marching to World War II and Karabakh war
memorials in Stepanakert. They also laid flowers at a nearby military cemetery
where scores of Karabakh Armenians killed in action were laid to rest.
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Armenian an Karabakh leaders lead a festive march in
Stepanakert, May 9, 2019.
The Armenian and Karabakh leaders then headed to Shushi where Sahakian hosted
an official reception.
Pashinian and Sahakian held talks in Stepanakert after the official ceremonies.
Their press offices gave no details of the talks.
The annual celebrations in Karabakh began on Wednesday. They were attended by
Armenia’s Karabakh-born former President Serzh Sarkisian, who was the
Armenian-populated territory’s top military commander at the start of the war.
Sarkisian refused to answer questions from an RFE/RL reporter when he and
Sahakian emerged from a state building in Stepanakert.
Kocharian’s Trial Set For May 13
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - President Robert Kocharian (R) and his senior adviser Armen Gevorgian
at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, January 26, 2003.
The trial of Robert Kocharian and three other former senior officials
prosecuted in connection with the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan will
start on May 13, lawyers for Armenia’s ex-president said on Thursday.
Judicial authorities did not immediately confirm the date of what will be one
of the most high-profile trials in Armenia’s history.
Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and retired army Generals
Seyran Ohanian and Yuri Khachaturov stand accused of “overthrowing the
constitutional order” in the wake of a disputed presidential election held in
February 2008. Investigators say they illegally used Armenian army units
against supporters of the main opposition presidential candidate who protested
against alleged electoral fraud.
All four men deny the charges. Kocharian, the only suspect held in pre-trial
detention, says that they are part of a political “vendetta” waged by Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Pashinian was one of the main opposition speakers during the 2008 protests. He
subsequently spent about two years in prison for organizing what the former
Armenian authorities characterized as “mass disturbances.”
Eight protesters and two police servicemen were killed as security forces
quelled those protests on March 1-2, 2008. Kocharian ordered army units into
central Yerevan during the violence.
Khachaturov served as deputy defense minister while Ohanian was the chief of
the Armenian army’s General Staff at the time. Ohanian has repeatedly denied
the army’s involvement in the post-election political processes.
Earlier this year, Kocharian was also charged with receiving a $3 million bribe
from an Armenian businesswoman, Silva Hambardzumian. Prosecutors say that
Hambardzumian also paid a separate $1 million kickback to Gevorgian. The latter
became Armenia’s deputy prime minister after Kocharian handed over power to
Serzh Sarkisian in April 2008.
Both Kocharian and Gevorgian deny the corruption accusations as well.
World Bank To Fund More Road Construction In Armenia
Armenia -- A road in the Syunik province, September 3, 2018.
The World Bank has disbursed a $15 million loan that will be spent on
rebuilding and repairing 61 kilometers of more roads across Armenia.
The bank announced on Thursday that the Armenian government will contribute
$3.8 million to the “additional financing” approved by it as part of the
Lifeline Road Improvement Project (LRIP) launched in 2009. It said 433
kilometers of Armenian roads have already been upgraded thanks to the LRIP.
“Despite visible improvement in the last decade, about 40 percent of the roads
in Armenia remain in poor condition, and one-third of the rural population
lacks access to an all-weather road,” read a statement released by the World
Bank.
“The rehabilitation of additional lifeline roads will facilitate better access
to jobs, markets, and other basic social services for over 60,000 people in the
provinces,” it quoted Sylvie Bossoutrot, the bank’s country manager for
Armenia, as saying.
This will allow local farmers and small business owners to “bring their
products to market more easily and at a lower cost,” said Bossoutrot.
The disbursement raised to almost $2.4 billion the total amount of mainly
low-interest loans provided by the World Bank to Armenia since 1992. It will
solidify the bank’s status as the South Caucasus state’s leading foreign
creditor.
The Armenian government is also planning to finance other road projects from
the state budget. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Wednesday that most of
62 billion drams ($129 million) in additional taxes which the government
intends to collect this year will be spent on road construction.
Yerevan Denies Blacklisting Ukrainian Lawmaker At Russia’s Behest
• Artak Khulian
Ukraine -- Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem gestures as he speaks to AFP
journalist in his office in Kyiv, March 19, 2019.
The National Security Service (NSS) insisted on Wednesday that Russia was not
responsible for the fact that a Ukrainian lawmaker was briefly prevented from
entering Armenia after landing at Yerevan airport last week.
The lawmaker, Mustafa Nayyem, flew to Yerevan on April 30 to attend a
conference as a private person. He told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on May 1 that
it took more than two hours before he was allowed to leave the Zvartnots
international airport.
Nayyem said immigration officers there told him that he had been barred from
entering Armenia at the request of “a third country.” “After the [Ukrainian]
consulate and the organizers of the conference intervened, I was finally
allowed to enter Armenia for once,” he said.
Nayyem said he was later told by Armenian politicians and Ukrainian Embassy
officials that Russia and Armenia are in coordination regarding Ukrainian
citizens who are on Moscow's sanctions list.
The NSS director, Artur Vanetsian, dismissed Nayyem’s claims about Russian
interference as “disinformation.” But he did confirm that the lawmaker was on
an NSS list of “undesirable” individuals banned from entering Armenia.
“As soon as I was told that such an incident has occurred the issue was sorted
out and Mustafa Nayyem entered Armenia,” Nayyem told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
“And Mustafa Nayyem stayed at the airport for roughly 40 minutes. There had
been no interference by Russia.”
Vanetsian claimed that the Ukrainian politician critical of Moscow had been
blacklisted by the NSS because of a “technical error.” He said that the
blacklist contained the names of as many as 30,000 foreign nationals and that
he significantly shortened it after being appointed as head of the security
service one year ago.
Artur Sakunts, an Armenian human rights activist, dismissed this explanation,
challenging the NSS to clarify why it regarded Nayyem as an “undesirable”
person in the first place. Sakunts said he believes Russian authorities had
told Yerevan to blacklist Nayyem because of the latter’s strong condemnations
of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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