Monday, Armenia Also Imposes Omicron Travel Ban • Robert Zargarian Syringes with needles are seen in front of a displayed stock graph and words "Omicron SARS-CoV-2" in this illustration taken, November 27, 2021. Armenia will temporarily bar entry of residents of South Africa and seven other regional states in a bid to protect its population against the new coronavirus variant Omicron, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said on Monday. The heavily mutated variant first detected in South Africa earlier this month is believed to be highly transmissible and potentially resistant to coronavirus vaccines. It now seems to be spreading around the world, leading many countries to impose travel restrictions. Avanesian said the Armenian government will take similar measures affecting citizens of South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. “The entry of people from these countries to the Republic of Armenia will be temporarily restricted,” she told a news conference. The minister echoed concerns about Omicron’s possible ability to evade existing vaccines protecting people against COVID-19. Still, she made clear that the government will continue to encourage Armenians to get inoculated. According to the Armenian Ministry of Health, only about 436,400 people in the country of about 3 million have been fully vaccinated to date. Avanesian announced that after weeks of deliberations the government has decided to introduce on January 1 a mandatory health pass for entry to cultural and leisure venues. Only those people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have had a recent negative test will be allowed to visit bars, restaurants and other public venues, she said. The daily number of officially confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Armenia began declining about two weeks ago after several months of steady increase that overwhelmed the national healthcare system. The Ministry of Health recorded 189 cases and 21 deaths on Sunday, the lowest figures reported in weeks. Court Extends Arrest Of Former Armenian Defense Minister • Artak Khulian Armenia -- Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan at a news conference in Yerevan, April 9, 2019. A court in Yerevan has extended the pretrial detention of Davit Tonoyan, a former defense minister facing corruption charges strongly denied by him. Tonoyan, two generals and an arms dealer were arrested by the National Security Service (NSS) two months ago in a criminal investigation into supplies of allegedly outdated rockets to Armenia’s armed forces. The NSS charged them with fraud and embezzlement that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($4.7 million). All four suspects deny any wrongdoing. Tonoyan’s lawyers again dismissed the accusations as baseless on Monday in response to a weekend court ruling allowing NSS investigators to hold Tonoyan in pretrial detention for two more months. In a statement, they claimed that the investigators lack “professional knowledge” of weaponry and ammunition and are simply keen to discredit the former defense minister. “We again want to bring the political leadership’s attention to the non-objective investigation conducted with regard to Davit Tonoyan,” they said. The NSS said in September that a private intermediary delivered the rockets to Armenia in 2011 and that the Defense Ministry refused to buy them after discovering that they are unusable. Seyran Ohanian, Armenia’s defense minister from 2008 to 2016, confirmed afterwards that they were not accepted by the military during his tenure. Ohanian, who is now a senior opposition lawmaker, said the rebuff forced the supplier to store them at a Defense Ministry arms depot. Citing the secrecy of the ongoing probe, the NSS has declined to publicly specify the date of the supply contract subsequently signed by the Defense Ministry or give other details. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appointed Tonoyan as defense minister just days after coming to power in May 2018. Tonoyan was sacked in November 2020 less than two weeks after a Russian-brokered agreement stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Some senior pro-Pashinian parliamentarians blamed him for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. The prime minister faced angry opposition demonstrations at the time. New Power Plant Inaugurated In Armenia • Emil Danielyan Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other officials attend the inauguration of a newly built power plant in Yrevan, . A German-Italian consortium inaugurated on Monday a thermal power plant built by it in Yerevan as part of a $270 million project approved by the Armenian government. The 254-megawatt facility is expected to enable Armenia to use less natural gas for electricity generation. It will also diversify foreign ownership in the country’s energy sector. The ArmPower consortium consists of a subsidiary of Germany’s Siemens group and two Italian companies. One of them, Renco, is the main engineering, procurement and construction contractor in the project. Renco had supposedly launched the project in March 2017 with a ground-breaking ceremony attended by then President Serzh Sarkisian. Armenia’s current government froze, however, Renco’s contract with the Sarkisian administration shortly after taking office in May 2018. It said the deal is not beneficial for the Armenian side and must be renegotiated. The two sides signed a revised deal in November 2018. Armenian officials said at the time that the Renco-led consortium agreed to cut its electricity tariff by 5 percent. That, they said, will allow Armenia to save $160 million in energy expenses over the next 25 years. Armenia -- The site of a new power plant built by a German-Italian consortium in Yerevan, July 12, 2019. Work on the new power plant began in earnest in July 2019 four months after ArmPower secured more than $200 million in loans and loan guarantees from several international lenders, notably the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC). The plant was inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Renco’s chief executive, Giovanni Rubini. An Armenian government statement on the ceremony said its electricity will be cheaper than power supplies coming from other gas-powered plants that currently meet roughly one-third of Armenia’s energy needs. One of them was constructed in Yerevan in 2010 with a $247 million loan provided by Japan. The state-owned facility has a capacity of 242 megawatts. Renco has done business in Armenia since the early 2000s. It was not involved in the local energy sector until its latest project, investing instead in luxury housing, hotels and office buildings. But the Italian company has built, installed or operated power generation and distribution facilities in other parts of the world. Court Upholds Acquittal Of Kocharian • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at a news conference, Yerevan, October 4, 2021. Armenia’s Court of Appeals has rejected prosecutors’ demands to overturn a lower court’s decision to throw out controversial coup charges that were brought against former President Robert Kocharian. Kocharian and three other former officials were prosecuted in connection with the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Anna Danibekian, a district court judge presiding over their trial, acquitted them in early April ten days after the Constitutional Court declared the charges unconstitutional. The trial prosecutors appealed against the acquittal. They demanded that the Court of Appeals allow investigators to charge the defendants with abuse of power and order Danibekian to resume the coup trial. The Court of Appeals rejected the prosecutors’ appeal in a ruling announced late on Friday. One of Kocharian’s lawyers, Hovannes Khudoyan, welcomed the decision. A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the law-enforcement agency will look into the ruling before deciding whether to appeal to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice. Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired army generals have said all along that the coup charges leveled against them are politically motivated. Lawyers representing them maintain that Danibekian’s decision to clear them of the alleged “overthrow of the constitutional order” stemmed from Armenian law. The judge also ruled on April 6 that Kocharian and Gevorgian will continue to stand trial on separate bribery charges which they also strongly deny. Court hearings on that case resumed in July. Kocharian, who is highly critical of Armenia’s current leadership, was first arrested in July 2018 shortly after the “velvet revolution” that brought Nikol Pashinian to power. He was set free on bail in June 2020. The 67-year-old ex-president set up an opposition alliance in May this year. It finished second in parliamentary elections held in June. 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.