Friday, September 17, 2021 Kocharian Not Allowed To Visit Russia September 17, 2021 • Naira Bulghadarian • Astghik Bedevian Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian holds a post-election news conference in Yerevan, June 22, 2021. An Armenian court has refused to allow Robert Kocharian, a former president leading the main opposition Hayastan alliance, to visit Moscow at the invitation of Russia’s ruling party. Kocharian’s office revealed the invitation last week, saying that the leadership of the United Russia party wants to deepen “partnership” with Hayastan, Armenia’s second largest parliamentary force. The trip was due to start at the end of Russian parliamentary elections slated for September 17-19. Kocharian needs a court permission to leave Armenia because of standing trial on corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated. Anna Danibekian, the judge presiding over the trial, repeatedly allowed him to visit Moscow earlier this year and last fall. She also cleared him of other, more serious charges in April. Hayastan said on Friday that Danibekian has refused to give such permission this time around without any “legal reason.” “We are forced to cancel the visit,” the opposition bloc said in a statement. The statement charged that the judge made the decision under strong government pressure. It said the move is aimed at “restricting Hayastan’s political activities” and undermining Russian-Armenian relations. RUSSIA - A truck drives past a campaign poster of the United Russia political party ahead of the Russian parliamentary and regional election outside Ulan-Ude, Buryatia republic, September 16, 2021. Kocharian, who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, is thought to enjoy a warm rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The latter has repeatedly made a point of congratulating the ex-president on his birthday anniversaries and praising his legacy ever since Armenian law-enforcement authorities first indicted him three years ago. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has described Kocharian as a “big friend of Russia” and said the two men “talk to each other quite often.” But he insisted in March that the Kremlin is not supporting or guiding Kocharian’s political activities in any way. Kocharian’s bloc was the main opposition challenger of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his party in snap parliamentary elections held June. It finished second in the polls. Kocharian told senior members of the bloc to intensify its activities and public outreach efforts at a meeting held on Tuesday. According to a Hayastan statement on the meeting, they assured him that they remain committed to ousting the “government wrecking Armenia and leading it to destruction.” “Very soon you will also witness street actions,” Ishkhan Saghatelian, a senior Hayastan figure, told reporters earlier on Friday. He did not go into details. Asked whether this means the alliance is planning to hold anti-government rallies, Saghatelian said: “We never gave up rallies in the first place.” Armenian Opposition Lawmakers Spurn Holiday Bonuses September 17, 2021 • Robert Zargarian Armenia - Senor lawmakers from the opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem alliances talk during a parliament session in Yerevan, August 24, 2021. Opposition lawmakers said on Friday that they will not accept hefty holiday bonuses allocated to all members and staffers of Armenia’s parliament by speaker Alen Simonian. Simonian decided to reward them on the occasion of the country’s Independence Day that will be marked on September 21. The one-off payments will be equivalent to 75 percent of the parliament deputies’ monthly wages, meaning that each of them will get at least 380,000 drams ($770). Both opposition alliances represented in the National Assembly criticized the decision as profligate and unethical, saying that the Armenian authorities are continuing to neglect the country’s socioeconomic problems aggravated by last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. “At a time when the country has severe socioeconomic problems and more than 10,000 wounded and disabled persons, public officials, including National Assembly deputies, are continuing to get bonuses,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, a deputy parliament speaker and senior member of the opposition Hayastan bloc. “In line with our campaign platform and statements, we will not benefit from these sums,” Saghatelian told reporters. “We will either return them to the state budget or use them for implementing a [charity] project in of Armenia’s border regions.” The opposition Pativ Unem bloc likewise said that all of its seven parliamentarians will donate their bonuses to victims of the Karabakh war and their families. In a statement, it said accepting the money means “living a normal life as if nothing happened” to Armenia and Karabakh. Armenia - Deputies from the ruling Civil Contract party attend a parliament session,, September 13, 2021. The parliamentary group of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party did not officially react to the opposition criticism. One of its members, Hovik Aghazarian, praised his opposition colleagues for planning to use their bonuses for charitable purposes. But Aghazarian made clear that he himself will take the extra cash. Another pro-government parliamentarian, Heriknaz Tigranian, said there is nothing wrong with accepting what she described as a “symbolic reward” worth roughly twice the amount of the average monthly wage in Armenia. Government officials said that all Armenian civil servants will receive Independence Day bonuses. Armenia’s previous parliament also controlled by Pashinian’s party faced similar criticism earlier this year when it decided to add 250,000 drams to its deputies’ monthly wages worth at least 473,000 drams. The extra sum was supposed to cover their job expenses. Armenia Takes Azerbaijan To International Court September 17, 2021 • Anush Mkrtchian NETHERLANDS -- People walk toward the International Court of Justice in the Hague, August 27, 2018 Armenia has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to hold Azerbaijan responsible for what it called anti-Armenian “racial discrimination,” mass killings and other grave human rights abuses committed during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “For decades, Azerbaijan has subjected Armenians to racial discrimination, with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev himself leading the way,” reads its lawsuit announced by the Hague-based UN tribunal on late Thursday. “As a result of this state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred, Armenians have been subjected to systemic discrimination, mass killings, torture and other abuse,” it says, adding that they “once again came to the fore” during last year’s Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It claims that Azerbaijan has continued to kill and torture Armenian prisoners of war and civilian captives even after the six-week war was stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November. Dozens of Armenians are believed to remain in Azerbaijani captivity. Yerevan wants the ICJ to find Baku guilty of violating several articles of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It is also seeking urgent measures to “protect and preserve Armenia’s rights and the rights of Armenians from further harm.” Responding to the Armenian move, Azerbaijan said it is poised to file a similar lawsuit against Armenia in the same court. The Foreign Ministry in Baku said it has been “carefully documenting and compiling evidence of gross human rights abuses” for that purpose. “This includes Armenia’s targeting of Azerbaijanis for expulsion, torture, murder and serious mistreatment,” it said in a statement reported by the AFP news agency. In comments cited by the Interfax news agency, the ministry spokeswoman, Leyla Abdullayeva, accused Yerevan of hampering the return of Azerbaijani civilians to districts around Karabakh retaken by the Azerbaijani army during and after the hostilities. She said the Armenians are refusing to share with Baku all maps of their landmines laid in those areas. Ara Ghazarian, a Yerevan-based international law expert, welcomed the Armenian government’s decision to take Baku to the UN court. “For Armenia and its people, this lawsuit is a means for legal protection and also deterrence against Azerbaijan,” Ghazarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday. The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states. The court usually takes years to hand down rulings on cases brought by them. Armenian, Iranian Leaders Discuss Closer Ties Amid Transport Hurdles September 17, 2021 Tajikistan - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (R) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meet in Dushanbe, September 17, 2021. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian discussed on Friday ways of deepening bilateral commercial ties complicated by an Azerbaijani checkpoint set up on the main highway connecting the two neighboring states. Raisi and Pashinian met on the sidelines of a Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in Tajikistan as Azerbaijani officers stopped and demanded hefty payments from Iranian trucks transporting goods to and from Armenia for the sixth consecutive day. More than a hundred such trucks were reportedly stranded on Thursday at a 21-kilometer section of the highway which the Armenian government controversially ceded to Azerbaijan following last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani authorities set up the checkpoint there on Sunday after again accusing Iranian trucks of illegally shipping cargos to Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian government’s press office said Pashinian and Raisi discussed, among other things, ways of “organizing unfettered cargo shipments between the two countries” as well as “processes taking place in the region.” It gave no details. The official Iranian readout of the talks made no mention of the new obstacle to Armenian-Iranian trade and wider transport links. It said Raisi “stressed the need to increase the current level of economic relations between Iran and Armenia.” In that regard, the recently elected Iranian president was reported to say that an Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation should become “more active.” He proposed that Yerevan and Tehran set up joint “specialized working groups” that would deal with “obstacles” to the implementation of their joint economic projects. According to the statement posted on the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s website, Pashinian pledged to “instruct relevant ministers” to remove those obstacles. It was Pashinian’s second meeting with Raisi in less than two months. The two men held their first face-to-face talks in early August when the Armenian premier visited Tehran to attend Raisi’s swearing-in ceremony held in the Iranian parliament. During those talks Pashinian reaffirmed his government’s readiness to have Iranian companies participate in its plans to refurbish Armenian highways leading to the Islamic Republic. The two governments set up in May a working group tasked with looking into practical aspects of such participation. 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.