Thursday, May 6, 2021 Opposition Parties Confirm Alliance With Kocharian May 06, 2021 • Naira Nalbandian Armenia -- The Armenian Revolutionary Federation holds a rally in Yerevan's Liberty Square, May 23, 2019. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and another opposition party officially confirmed on Thursday that they will join forces with former President Robert Kocharian to participate in snap parliamentary elections expected in June. “We will soon make a joint statement on the formation of the alliance, its name, electoral list and other tasks,” Ishkhan Saghatelian, the head of Dashnaktsutyun’s governing body in Armenia, said in a video address posted on Facebook. Saghatelian said the Dashnaktsutyun leadership has decided to team up with Kocharian and the newly established party called Resurgent Armenia because they have similar “visions for Armenia’s future.” Dashnaktsutyun, which also has branches in Armenian Diaspora communities around the world, was allied to Kocharian when he ruled the country from 1998-2008. It is not represented in the current parliament, having garnered only about 4 percent of the vote in the last elections held in December 2018. Resurgent Armenia announced the creation of the alliance in a separate statement. It said the alliance will be led by Kocharian. The party, which held its founding congress earlier this week, is led by Vahe Hakobian, a former governor of Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province. Most of its senior members are elected local government officials and other well-known residents of the region sandwiched between Iran, Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave. They have angrily challenged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in recent months, blaming him for Armenia’s defeat in the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh which left Syunik facing serious security challenges. The Resurgent Armenia statement said the “grave situation in Armenia and Karabakh” is what necessitates the party’s electoral alliance with “like-minded political forces.” Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian meets with supporters, Yerevan, April 21, 2021. Kocharian did not immediately comment on the announcements made by the two parties. But he did say last month that he will lead a bloc comprising at least two opposition parties. He expressed confidence that it will be Pashinian’s main election challenger. The announcements came the day after Levon Ter-Petrosian, who had served as Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998, publicly urged Kocharian and another ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, to team up with him and try to unseat Pashinian in the upcoming polls. Ter-Petrosian said the incumbent prime minister’s reelection would be “much more dangerous for Armenia than even possible or hypothetical threats emanating from Azerbaijan and Turkey.” Both Kocharian and Sarkisian were quick to turn down the proposal. Sarkisian reaffirmed his Republican Party’s decision to form an alliance with another opposition group led by Artur Vanetsian, a former head of Armenia’s National Security Service. Russia Vows No Letup In Karabakh Peace Efforts May 06, 2021 • Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian meets with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Yerevan, May 6, 2021. Russia will keep doing its best to ensure the full implementation of the Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to Yerevan on Thursday. “We are not reducing our efforts at returning all detainees to their homes, demining, preserving cultural and religious heritage as well as launching the work of relevant international organizations in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Lavrov said after talks with his Armenian counterpart Ara Ayvazian. In that context, he stressed the importance of Russian efforts to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to open their transport links after decades of conflict. He said a trilateral working group formed by the Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani governments for that purpose is helping to further stabilize the situation in the Karabakh conflict zone. “The success of this work will be decisive for normalizing the overall situation and laying the groundwork for creative cooperation in the post-conflict period,” added Lavrov. He further stated that Armenia and Azerbaijan are now also engaged in a demarcation and delimitation of their internationally recognized border. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials have repeatedly made statements to the contrary. Speaking at a joint news conference with Lavrov, Ayvazian reiterated the official Armenian line that the conflict cannot be deemed resolved until the conflicting parties agree on Karabakh’s status, the main bone of contention. Yerevan says such an agreement must reflect peace proposals made by the OSCE Minsk Group co-headed by Russia, the United States and France. Armenia - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lays a wreath at the Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan, May 6, 2021. Lavrov, who is due to visit Baku early next week, said the group’s chief priority now must be to create an atmosphere of mutual trust. In a joint statement issued on Wednesday, the Minsk Group co-chairs called for “concrete steps to create an atmosphere of mutual trust conducive to long-lasting peace.” They urged the parties to “fully and expeditiously complete the exchange process for all prisoners, detainees, and remains, and to respect their obligations to ensure the humane treatment of detainees.” The statement came the day after Azerbaijan released three more Armenian prisoners of war. Baku remains reluctant to set free more than 100 other Armenian POWs and civilian captives believed to remain in Azerbaijani captivity. Yerevan regards this as a gross violation of the November 9 truce accord brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meeting with Pashinian later on Thursday, Lavrov said Russia will spare no effort to secure the release of the remaining Armenian prisoners. “We are confident that we will manage to solve this issue soon,” he said. Lavrov also assured Pashinian that Moscow remains “committed to ensuring the security of our ally, Armenia.” Latvia Also Recognizes Armenian Genocide May 06, 2021 Latvia – Latvian and European Union flags fly in the capital Riga. Latvia’s parliament voted on Thursday to pass a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey and honoring its 1.5 million victims. The resolution was drafted by the parliament’s foreign affairs committee and approved by 58 votes to 11, with 7 abstentions. It says that the mass killings and deportations of Armenians, which began with the April 1915 mass arrests of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople, constituted a genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman government. It notes that the European Parliament first recognized the genocide in 1987. The resolution also says Latvia believes that condemnation of all crimes against humanity is important for preventing a repeat of such tragedies in the future. Armenia’s outgoing ambassador to the Baltic state, Tigran Mkrtchian, hailed the development and thanked Latvian lawmakers for “addressing this issue extremely important for the Armenian people.” “What was hard to imagine years ago became a reality today,” Mkrtchian wrote on his Facebook page. Predictably, the Latvian resolution was condemned by Turkey, which continues to strongly a deny a premeditated government effort to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it is devoid of “any legal basis.” The vehement Turkish denials are dismissed by most scholars outside Turkey. The Armenian genocide has also been recognized by the parliaments and/or governments of three dozen other countries, including Latvia’s Baltic neighbor Lithuania as well as the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Italy. U.S. President Joe Biden used the word “genocide” in his April 24 statement on the 106th anniversary of the World War One-era slaughter of Ottoman Armenians. Pashinian’s Party Not To Form New Election Bloc May 06, 2021 Armenia - Campaign posters of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's Civil Contract party are displayed in Yerevan, May 5, 2021. A senior member of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party said on Thursday that it will not form an alliance with other political allies of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to participate in upcoming parliamentary elections. “The Civil Contract party will participate in the elections as a separate party, rather than in an alliance,” Lilit Makunts, the leader of the party’s parliamentary group, told journalists. Pashinian set up such an alliance ahead of the last elections held in December 2018. The bloc dominated by his party and called My Step won 70 percent of the vote at the time. Makunts refused to shed light on the list of Civil Contract’s candidates for the snap polls expected in June. “I will just say that there will be new people on our electoral list,” she said without naming any of them. Pashinian pledged in March to call the vote amid renewed anti-government protests staged by opposition forces blaming him for Armenia’s defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan and demanding his resignation. He and his cabinet stepped down for that purpose on April 25. Under the Armenian constitution, early elections must be held within two months if the prime minister resigns and the National Assembly twice fails to elect another head of the government. In what was the first step towards its dissolution, the parliament controlled by Pashinian did not reelect him or install another premier on Monday. It is due vote again on May 10. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.