Friday, Armenian, Azeri Leaders ‘Agree To Ease Tensions’ Turkmenistan -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attend a meeting of heads of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in Ashgabat, October 11, 2019 Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have promised more efforts to “prepare the populations for peace,” international mediators said after ending a fresh tour of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone late on Thursday. The U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group met with Pashinian and Aliyev during their latest trips to Yerevan, Stepanakert and Baku. “The two leaders briefed the Co-Chairs on their recent conversation during the CIS summit in Ashgabat and presented their ideas on how to advance the settlement process,” read a joint statement issued by the mediators. “The Co-Chairs welcomed the prospect of implementing specific humanitarian and security measures to prepare the populations for peace and reduce tensions.” The mediators shed no light on those measures. They said they urged the conflicting parties to remove “obstacles potentially interfering with” the work of a small OSCE mission monitoring the ceasefire regime along the Karabakh “line of contact” and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. They did not specify what those obstacles are and who created them. Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) meets with OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Yerevan, 15Oct2019. Aliyev and Pashinian already agreed to take “a number of measures in the humanitarian field” and help create “an environment conducive to peace” when they met in Vienna in March. There seems to have been no further progress in the negotiation process since then. The two leaders publicly traded barbs during the October 11 summit of former Soviet republics held in Turkmenistan’s capital. Still, they reportedly talked to each other at great length at an official dinner hosted by Turkmen President Gurbaguly Berdymuhamedov. In their statement, the mediators also announced that the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers “confirmed their intention to meet again under Co-Chair auspices before the end of the year.” The Russian co-chair, Igor Popov, said in Stepanakert on Wednesday that the talks could be held in December. Like Aliyev and Pashinian, the two ministers have met on a regular basis over the past year, most recently in New York late last month. In an interview with the Russian newspaper “Izvestia” published on Thursday, Azerbaijan’s Elmar Mammadyarov said he is “a bit disappointed” with the results of the New York talks. “If we want to move forward and really want a political settlement of this dispute then we should start … ‘substantive negotiations,’” said Mammadyarov. He complained that the mediators believe such talks are contingent on a further decrease in shooting incidents on the frontlines. More serious truce violations there did not prevent Baku and Yerevan from making progress in their past negotiations, he said. The Armenian Foreign Ministry dismissed Mammadyarov’s criticism on Friday. Armenian Government Denies Additional Concessions To Ryanair • Naira Nalbandian UKRAINE -- Passengers get off a Ryanair Boeing 737-8AS aircraft at the Boryspil International Airport near Kyiv, September 3, 2018 Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian insisted on Friday that the government did not make far-reaching financial concessions to the Ryanair in return for the Irish low-cost airline’s decision to launch flights to Armenia. After months of negotiations with the government, Ryanair announced on Wednesday that it start flying from Yerevan to Milan and Rome in January and open two more routes next summer. The announcement was widely welcomed in Armenia, with government officials predicting a significant drop in the cost of air travel and major boost to the domestic tourism sector. Ryanair’s decision is understood to be tied to government plans to exempt the company from a fixed $21 tax levied from every air ticket sold in the country. The tax break will also apply to any other airline that will launch flights to new destinations from Armenia. Some travel bloggers and public figures said that the government has also made other, more significant concessions to Ryanair. In particular, they claimed that it will pay for the Irish carrier’s airport ground services in Armenia worth around $80 per passenger. Such a subsidy would presumably require millions of dollars in annual government funding. Avinian denied those claims. “We are not giving Ryanair any additional privileges at taxpayers’ expense,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. Avinian said that the government is only planning some financial incentives for airlines that will fly to Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city whose international airport is much smaller and more underused than Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport. He gave few details of that “additional support.” Ryanair is due to launch flights between Gyumri and the southern German city of Memmingen in the summer of 2020. The government also hopes to attract other European budget airlines, notably Wizz Air, to Armenia. Tatevik Revazian, the head of Armenian Civil Aviation Committee who negotiated the agreement with Ryanair, indicated on Wednesday that it is close to reaching a similar deal with Wizz Air. Armenian High Court Chief’s Relatives Questioned By Security Service • Artak Khulian Armenia -- Supporters of Constitutional Court Chairman Hrayr Tovmasian protest outside the National Security Service headquarters in Yerevan, . The National Security Service (NSS) interrogated Hrayr Tovmasian’s father and two daughters on Friday one day after another law-enforcement agency launched separate criminal proceedings against the embattled chairman of Armenia’s Constitutional Court. The NSS said it decided to seek “explanations” from his close relatives and other individuals during “the preparation of materials” for a potential investigation. It gave no other details in a short statement issued amid opposition allegations that the Armenian government is targeting Tovmasian’s family as part of its efforts to force him to resign. A lawyer for the family, Hayk Sargsian, said NSS officers asked Tovmasian’s daughters questions mainly relating to their assets, notably a car and a garage which they received as a gift from a cousin who emigrated to the United States in 2016. Sargsian said they also inquired about another car which one of the young women owned until donating it to Nagorno-Karabakh’s army around the same time. Neither woman was asked questions about her father’s activities, he told reporters after the interrogations. Tovmasian’s father Vartan was questioned at the NSS headquarters in downtown Yerevan earlier in the day. According to his lawyer, Amram Makinian, NSS officers asked him questions about the roof of his one-story house located in a village near Yerevan. In particular, he said, they wondered when it was repaired and who financed that work. The 75-year-old told them that he fixed the roof at his own expense and with the help of his neighbors, added the lawyer. NSS officers already visited and talked to Vartan Tovmasian at his home in the village of Darakert on Thursday. He said they were mainly interested in the house roof. The NSS sent summonses to Tovmasian’s father and daughters as Armenia’s Special Investigative Service (SIS) launched a criminal inquiry into a possible “usurpation of power” by the Constitutional Court chairman and former senior officials. Such an inquiry was demanded by a lawmaker who alleged recently that Tovmasian colluded with key members of Armenia’s former leadership to illegally become head of the court in March 2018. The SIS has not charged anyone so far. Under Armenian law, Tovmasian cannot be prosecuted without the consent of at least five of the nine Constitutional Court justices. Seven of those judges issued on Friday a joint statement saying that they are “monitoring developments relating to Hrayr Tovmasian and members of his family and will react if need be.” The Constitutional Court refused to oust its chairman as recently as on Tuesday. The Armenian parliament called for his dismissal in an October 4 appeal to the court drafted by its majority loyal to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The parliament accused Tovmasian of mishandling appeals lodged by the arrested former President Robert Kocharian. It also cited his past membership in the former ruling Republican Party (HHK). Opposition politicians and other critics claim that Pashinian’s government is now using law-enforcement bodies in its efforts to force Tovmasian to step down. Several dozen of them, including senior HHK figures, rallied outside the NSS building in downtown during Friday’s interrogations. “The only state structure which more or less protects the constitution and serves the Republic of Armenia, rather than Nikol Pashinian’s regime, is the Constitutional Court,” claimed Eduard Sharmazanov, the HHK spokesman. “What is happening now is [the result of] a fabricated political order.” “It emerged yesterday that our authorities took a step, which is at odds with not only the rule of law but also morality, in order to achieve their political objective of getting rid of Hrayr Tovmasian,” said Ruben Melikian, a lawyer and Karabakh’s former human rights ombudsman. Pashinian’s political allies strongly denied, however, that Tovmasian is persecuted for political reasons. “I can understand representatives of the rejected [former] authorities,” said Vahagn Hovakimian, a parliament deputy from the ruling My Step bloc. “They see things within the bounds of their mental horizon, namely [imagine] what they themselves had done.” “Nobody is subjected to political persecution,” Hovakimian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. He argued that relatives of Armenian state officials do not have legal immunity from prosecution. Tovmasian himself has not yet commented on the latest developments. He claimed on October 2 that the authorities want to force him out in order to gain control over Armenia’s highest court. Senior Government Official Resigns Armenia -- Sarhat Petrosian, head of the Cadaster Committee, at a meeting in Yerevan, October 14, 2019. The head of a government agency regulating Armenia’s real estate market resigned on Friday, citing policy differences and “dilettantism” of senior officials in charge of urban development in the country. The official, Sarhat Petrosian, is a well-known architect and public figure who was appointed as head of the Cadaster Committee in the wake of last year’s “Velvet Revolution” in which he actively participated. The committee maintains a state registry of real estate and registers property deals. “I do not agreed with our government’s policy and existing approaches in the area of urban development which I believe encompasses the cadaster sector as well,” Petrosian said in a statement. “Despite the unprecedented upswing registered in the real estate market [since the revolution] we have regressed in the area of urban development,” he said, accusing the current and former heads of the government’s Urban Development Committee of imitating meaningful activities. Petrosian complained that he has had only sporadic influence on government policies. “As head of a government agency and urban development architect by education, I can no longer tolerate dilettantism and sectarianism bordering on corruption,” he said. Petrosian did not give examples of mismanagement alleged by him. He said he will talk about concrete cases “in the future.” The 37-year-old official also thanked Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for appointing him to the post and engineering last year’s “incredible change” in Armenia. “I continue to regard the changes of 2018 as one of the most important achievements in the modern history of the Armenian people which must be preserved, developed and spread so as to not allow stateless opportunists to discredit or use them for personal welfare,” concluded the statement. Pashinian’s office did not immediately react to the announcement of Petrosian’s resignation. Press Review “Aravot” says that the Armenian authorities must not target Hrayr Tovmasian’s family in their drive to oust the chairman of the Constitutional Court Chairman. It says that Tovmasian for years “served” Armenia’s former leadership, rather than “the state and the law,” and must therefore not continue to sit on the country’s highest court. The newspaper editor believes that his resignation is a “political and ethical” issue. “Should it also have criminal consequences?” he writes. “I don’t know. Even if it should, only Tovmasian, and not his father and children, must be held accountable. Disturbing his relatives can leave the impression of psychological pressure aimed forcing Tovmasian to step down after the Constitutional Court’s refusal to do so.” “Zhamanak” says that many Armenians were shocked by this week’s killing of an on-duty police officer in Yerevan by suspected robbers. The paper says that Tigran Arakelian’s death could spur a public debate on the role of Armenian law-enforcement bodies and their radical reform. “Haykakan Zhamanak” looks at the “propaganda war” which it says is waged against the Armenian government. “One gets the impression that some invisible hand is consistently raising tensions in Armenia-Artsakh relations,” writes the pro-government paper. “And they do that in a quite inept fashion … They spread false rumors that Nikol Pashinian addressed Bako Sahakian as ‘Mr. Governor’ and try to cinch a tough reaction to that from Artsakh’s military circles. That is to say that they are playing a very dirty game aimed at heightening tensions between Armenia and Artsakh.” It points the finger at Armenia’s former rulers, saying that they latter are desperate to return to power. (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