Friday, April 9, 2021
Pashinian, Kocharian Urged To Drop Out Of Parliamentary Race
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party,
March 22, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and former President Robert Kocharian must not
participate in snap parliamentary elections expected in June, the leader of a
major opposition party said on Friday.
Edmon Marukian said they both must “leave and free the political arena” because
Armenia needs to a follow a “third path” represented by his Bright Armenia Party
(LHK), one of the two opposition groups represented in the current parliament.
“Armenia has no right to remain stuck: this is what Pashinian’s reelection would
mean. Nor does Armenia have a right to move backwards,” he told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service.
Marukian dismissed suggestions that the political forces led by Pashinian and
Kocharian will be the main election contenders.
“Most voters now reject both the current and former authorities,” he claimed. He
said his meetings with many citizens have exposed a “deep disappointment” with
Pashinian’s government.
Hrachya Hakobian, a pro-government lawmaker and Pashinian’s brother-in-law,
shrugged off the LHK leader’s comments.
“Edmon Marukian cannot decide who must leave the arena,” he said. “Armenia’s
citizens will decide that through the elections.”
Kocharian reaffirmed this week his plans to participate in the elections. He
said he will lead an electoral alliance comprising at least two opposition
parties.
The ex-president, who had ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, predicted earlier this
year a “bipolar” parliamentary race, implying that he will be Pashinian’s main
challenger.
For his part, Pashinian referred to his principal political foes late last month
as “wolves seeking to come to power.”
Government Withdraws Controversial Bill On Rights Defender
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia -- Human right ombudsman Arman Tatoyan speaks during parliamentary
hearings in Yerevan, April 5, 2019.
In an apparent response to international criticism, the government has withdrawn
a bill that would allow it to cut state funding to Armenia’s office of the human
rights ombudsman.
An Armenian law bans any year-on-year reduction in the amount of budgetary funds
allocated to the office as well as a number of other public bodies. The bill
drafted by the Ministry of Finance and approved by Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s cabinet as recently as on March 11 would abolish this clause.
The ministry has given budgetary and economic reasons for the proposed measure
condemned by Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan and opposition parties as politically
motivated.
Tatoyan has insisted that the bill runs counter to international standards and
would effectively end his office’s independence from the government and the
pro-government majority in the National Assembly.
“If the bill had been passed and led to a change in our current status, it would
have meant an immediate drop in the country’s democracy indicators,” Tatoyan
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday.
He suggested that the government decided not to push the bill through the
Armenian parliament because of concerns voiced by the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and
Western human rights groups such as Freedom House.
“This new bill, if passed, will further constrain the independence of the [Human
Rights Defender’s Office] and impede its mandate to protect human rights in
Armenia,” Freedom House said in a March 12 statement.
The government has so far declined to comment on its decision to withdraw the
proposed change. It is not clear whether the government plans to amend the bill
or scrap it altogether.
Tatoyan has regularly criticized the current and former Armenian governments’
actions and policies since taking over as ombudsman in 2016. While the
U.S.-educated lawyer has rarely faced public criticism from the current
government, Pashinian’s supporters have attacked him on social media in recent
months.
Russian, Turkish Leaders Again Discuss Karabakh
• Heghine Buniatian
Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at a screen showing Turkish President
Tayyip Erdogan as he attends a foundation-laying ceremony for the third reactor
of the Akkuyu nuclear plant in Turkey, via a video link in Moscow, March 10,
2021.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip
Erdogan discussed the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions in a phone
call on Friday.
The Kremlin reported that Erdogan praised Russia’s efforts to “further stabilize
the situation” in the Karabakh conflict zone and ensure the implementation of
Russian-brokered agreements that stopped last year’s Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
In a statement, it said Putin briefed Erdogan on his latest conversations with
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
The Russian and Turkish leaders agreed on the “need to step up work on restoring
the transport infrastructure in the South Caucasus,” added the statement.
Putin met with Pashinian in Moscow on Wednesday and spoke with Aliyev by phone
the following day. The Russian president reportedly discussed with them the
implementation of the ceasefire agreement brokered by him on November 9.
The agreement calls, among other things, for the restoration of transport links
between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Putin, Pashinian and Aliyev decided to set up a
trilateral task force for that purpose when they held a trilateral meeting in
Moscow in January.
Later in January, Russia and Turkey opened a joint center in Azerbaijan to
monitor the Karabakh ceasefire. The center operates independently from around
2,000 Russian peacekeepers deployed in Karabakh.
During the six-week war, Turkey supported the Azerbaijan with weapons and expert
advice. It also reportedly recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries and sent
them to fight in Karabakh on the Azerbaijani side.
Baku Accused Of Breaking Deal On Armenian Prisoner Release
• Naira Nalbandian
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
• Satenik Hayrapetian
ARMENIA -- An Armenian captive, wearing a face mask to curb the spread of
COVID-19, is escorted off a Russian military plane upon arrival at a military
airport outside Yerevan, December 14, 2020
Armenian officials accused Azerbaijan on Friday of reneging on a pledge to free
Armenian soldiers and civilians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity five months
after a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian government representatives said late on Thursday that a new group of
Armenian prisoners is about to be set free and repatriated. However, none of
them was on board a Russian plane that arrived from Baku to Yerevan shortly
after midnight.
“Unfortunately, the return of prisoners is again delayed,” the office of Deputy
Prime Minister Tigran Avinian said in a statement posted on Facebook. It said
that Azerbaijan is continuing to violate one of the key terms of the truce
agreement.
“Negotiations mediated by Russia are continuing and we hope that the Azerbaijani
side will at last respect the statement signed by it and implement the
humanitarian agreement,” added the statement.
Andranik Kocharian, a senior lawmaker representing the ruling My Step bloc, said
that Baku pledged to free more Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilian
captives as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest conversations
with Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s leaders.
Putin met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Moscow on Wednesday and had a
phone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev the following day.
Kocharian claimed that Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov, the commander of
Russian peacekeeping forces deployed in Karabakh, travelled to Baku to “escort
the prisoners back to Armenia.”
Muradov, who reportedly arrived in Yerevan on board the Russian plane early on
Friday, categorically denied that, however. “It was an ordinary working visit,”
he told the Armenian newspaper “Hraparak.”
Armenia -- Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov, the commander of Russian
peacekeepering forces stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, meets with Armenian Defense
Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian, Yerevan, February 10, 2021.
Asked to comment on the Armenian officials’ statements about the impending
release of prisoners, Muradov said: “They are misleading the population.”
The Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement, brokered by Putin on November 9, calls for
the unconditional release of all prisoners held by the conflicting sides. The
Russian peacekeepers arranged several prisoner swaps in December and early this
year.
A total of 69 Armenian POWs and civilians have been freed to date. More than 100
others are believed to remain in Azerbaijani captivity.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov again claimed on Thursday that all
of them were captured after the truce accord took effect on November 10 and are
therefore not covered by it. He said Baku regards them as “terrorists” and does
not intend to release them.
More than 50 of the remaining POWs were captured in early December when the
Azerbaijani army occupied the last two Armenian-controlled villages in
Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district. They all are army reservists who were
drafted from Armenia’s Shirak province during the six-week war.
Scores of their angry relatives blocked on Friday morning the roads leading to
Shirak to demand an urgent meeting with Pashinian. Many of them gathered at
Yerevan’s Erebuni airport late on Thursday after hearing reports about the
impending release of their loved ones.
“No official at the airport bothered to answer our questions,” one of the
protesters told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“We are waiting to see when the country’s leader, our commander-in-chief, will
agree to meet us. We won’t go to Yerevan anymore,” he said.
Armenia - Relatives of Armenian POWs block a roads in Shirak province, April 9,
2021
Relatives of other POWs and missing soldiers blockaded, meanwhile, the Defense
Ministry compound in Yerevan. Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian and chief
of the Armenian army’s General Staff, Lieutenant-General Artak Davtian, offered
to receive their representatives.
The protesters rejected the offer, demanding that Harutiunian and Davtian emerge
from the compound and talk to them on the spot.
They tried at one point to break into the compound but were stopped by riot
police. The chief of the Armenian police, Vahe Davtian, arrived at the scene to
talk to the protesters.
Pashinian’s government also faced strong criticism from the opposition. Edmon
Marukian, the leader of the Bright Armenia Party (LHK), accused the government
of botching the prisoner release in a failed attempt to score political points.
“This is yet another result of their inept and sloppy behavior which was coupled
with their attempt to use this tragedy for a publicity stunt,” Marukian told
reporters.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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