Monday, June 7, 2021
Armenian Foreign Ministry Confirms More Resignations
Armenia - The Armenian Foreign Ministry building in Yerevan.
All four deputy foreign ministers of Armenia tendered their resignations after
Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian stepped down on May 27, it was officially
confirmed on Monday.
Ayvazian announced his decision hours after an emergency session of the Armenian
government’s Security Council which discussed mounting tensions on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Speaking at a May 31 farewell meeting with the Foreign Ministry staff, Ayvazian
hinted that he is quitting because of disagreeing with government decisions
which he believes could put the country’s sovereignty and national security at
risk. He did not go into details.
It emerged afterwards that one of Ayvazian’s deputies, Gagik Ghalachian, also
handed in his resignation on May 27. Some Armenian media outlets reported last
week that the three other deputy ministers -- Artak Apitonian, Avet Adonts and
Armen Ghevondian -- followed suit.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmed those reports on Monday. It told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the resignations of Apitonian, Adonts and
Ghevondian were submitted to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s office for
approval last week.
None of the vice-ministers has been formally relieved of his duties so far.
Speaking at the May 27 meeting of the Security Council, Pashinian called for the
deployment of international observers along contested portions of the frontier
where Armenian and Azerbaijani troops have been facing off against each other
for the last four weeks.
Some opposition figures and other critics of Pashinian denounced the proposal,
accusing him of failing to defend Armenia against foreign aggression and
plotting to cede Armenian territory to Baku. The prime minister and his allies
deny that.
Ayvazian’s remarks gave Pashinian’s detractors more ammunition. An Armenian
government spokeswoman challenged the outgoing minister to publicly clarify
“who, where and how was going to take some steps or to make decisions
contradicting our country’s national and state interests.”
Ter-Petrosian Warns Of Election Trouble
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- First President Levon Ter-Petrossian launches the election campaign
of his Armenian National Congress party, Yerevan, June 7, 2021
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian continued to attack his successor Robert
Kocharian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Monday, saying that their bitter
rivalry will make the upcoming parliamentary elections the “most dangerous” in
Armenia’s history.
Ter-Petrosian claimed that they are ready to do everything to win the snap
elections scheduled for June 20.
“It’s a battle between their resources and supporters for now,” he said. “They
will not content themselves with that. There will be thousands of irregularities
by both sides during the elections. In case of thousands of irregularities there
will definitely be incidents inside polling stations that could get out of
control.”
Speaking during the official presentation of the election manifesto of his
Armenian National Congress (HAK) party, Ter-Petrosian also said Pashinian and
Kocharian are motivated by personal revenge and never fulfill their promises.
“They have said one thing but done a totally different thing,” he said.
Last month Ter-Petrosian publicly called on Kocharian and the other former
Armenian president, Serzh Sarkisian, to lead together with him a broad-based
opposition alliance and try to unseat Pashinian. He said they also must also
pledge not to seek the post of prime minister in the event of their bloc’s
victory. Both men turned down the proposal.
Ter-Petrosian, who had served as Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998,
insisted that an electoral alliance of the three ex-presidents would have left
Pashinian without any chance of reelection.
Pashinian last week invited Ter-Petrosian, Kocharian and Sarkisian to a live
televised debate. All three men dismissed the offer.
“I turned down Pashinian out of pity,” Ter-Petrosian explained on Monday. “I
took pity on him because that debate could have meant a [political] suicide for
Nikol.”
Pashinian played a major role in Ter-Petrosian’s 2008 opposition movement. He
subsequently fell out with the 76-year-old ex-president and set up his own party.
Gunfire Reported On Armenian-Azeri Border
• Susan Badalian
Armenia - A view from Kut village in Gegharkuniq province, June 6, 2021.
Tensions remain high along contested sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border, with the Armenian military claiming on Monday to have forced Azerbaijani
troops to stop fortifying some of their new positions controversially taken
almost a month ago.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said its troops took “counteractions” on the Armenian
side of the frontier near the village of Verin Shorzha in eastern Gegharkunik
province.
It released a short video that purportedly showed Azerbaijani excavators digging
trenches and then leaving the scene after what appeared to be gunshots fired
from nearby Armenian positions.
“They [the excavators] worked here both yesterday and today. But nothing is
being done right now,” Verin Shorzha’s mayor told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Azerbaijani troops reportedly crossed several sections of the border and
advanced a few kilometers into Gegharkunik and another Armenian province,
Syunik, on May 12-14, triggering a tense standoff with Armenian army units
reinforced in recent weeks. Yerevan has repeatedly demanded their unconditional
withdrawal. Baku maintains that they did not cross into Armenian territory.
In a weekend statement, the Defense Ministry in Yerevan said Azerbaijani forces
halted last Thursday similar fortification work at a Gegharkunik section of the
border after Armenian “warning shots.”
The ministry also said that Armenian and Azerbaijani troops deployed near
another Gegharkunik village, Kut, exchanged gunfire on Saturday. It accused
Azerbaijani soldiers of firing at an Armenian shepherd who tried to herd
livestock that approached their post back to Kut.
“The gunfire stopped after retaliatory actions taken by the Armenian side,” the
ministry said, adding that no one was wounded in the incident.
Local residents told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday that about 80 cows
belonging to five Kut families ended up in Azerbaijani-controlled territory.
They said Armenian military officials are negotiating with their Azerbaijani
colleagues in a bid to return the cows to their owners.
The Azerbaijani military did not report shooting incidents in the area in recent
days.
Armenian Election Campaign Officially Starts
• Naira Nalbandian
• Marine Khachatrian
• Satenik Hayrapetian
Armenia - Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia Party,
starts its election campaign in Yerevan, June 7, 2021.
Campaigning officially began in Armenia on Monday for the June 20 snap
parliamentary elections aimed at ending a serious political crisis resulting
from last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Twenty-six political parties and blocs are vying for at least 101 seats in the
next Armenian parliament that will decide the political future of Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian.
The parties will need to win at least 5 percent of the vote in order to be
represented in the National Assembly. The legal vote threshold for blocs is set
at 7 percent.
The main challengers of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party are the two opposition
parties represented in the outgoing parliament as well as blocs led by the
country’s three former presidents: Levon Ter-Petrosian, Robert Kocharian and
Serzh Sarkisian. They blame Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war
with Azerbaijan stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement last November.
Most major election contenders began holding meetings with supporters weeks
before the official start of the campaign. Pashinian has traded increasingly
bitter accusations and insults with Kocharian and Sarkisian. In particular, the
latter have accused the incumbent of misrule and inability to confront grave
security challenges facing Armenia even after the war.
As he campaigned in Armavir province west of Yerevan on Monday Pashinian again
lambasted the two ex-presidents and said that they will be brought to justice
for what he called past corrupt practices if he retains power. He also
reiterated his calls for voters to hand him a landslide victory in the upcoming
elections.
“We expect at least 60 percent of the vote … We must uproot the political forces
that want to provoke a civil war in Armenia,” he said at a rally held in the
village of Parakar.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at an election campaign rally in
Echmiadzin, June 7, 2021.
According to an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington-based International
Republican Institute (IRI) and conducted from April 8 through May 4, only 26
percent of Armenians were ready to vote for Pashinian’s party.
Kocharian and his opposition allies making up the Hayastan (Armenia) bloc
campaigned, meanwhile, in southeastern Syunik province. The ex-president was
scheduled to hold a rally in the provincial capital Kapan on Monday evening.
Unlike Kocharian, Sarkisian is not seeking to become prime minister or even a
parliament deputy. His Republican Party (HHK) has formed an alliance with the
opposition Fatherland party of Artur Vanetsian, a former head of Armenia’s
National Security Service.
Vanetsian tops the list of the alliance’s election candidates. He kicked off its
election campaign in northern Tavush province.
Edmon Marukian, the leader of the parliamentary Bright Armenia Party (LHK),
expressed serious concern over mounting tensions between the ruling party and
the radical opposition forces led by the two ex-presidents. He claimed that they
could plunge the country into a “civil war.”
Marukian said Armenians can prevent it by voting for his party in large numbers.
“Or else, if one of those sides succeeds it will seek to destroy the other,” he
told reporters while marching through Yerevan together with his associates.
Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), the other opposition party represented in the
outgoing parliament, was due to hold its first campaign rally in Abovian, a town
15 kilometers north of Yerevan has long been BHK leader Gagik Tsarukian’s
political stronghold.
Other senior BHK members presented the party’s campaign platform at a news
conference in Yerevan. The BHK promises, among other things, to further deepen
Armenia’s security ties with Russia through a new “military-political treaty.”
The document also reaffirms Tsarukian’s controversial pledge to write off every
Armenian’s debts commercial banks not exceeding 3 million drams ($5,800).
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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