Friday, December 24, 2021 Pashinian Hopes For ‘Compromise’ Road Deal With Aliyev December 24, 2021 Beglium - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and European Council President Charles Michel meet in Brussels, December 14, 2021. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed hope on Friday that he and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will iron out their differences on the status of a highway that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia. Pashinian confirmed that they failed to reach an agreement on the issue at their two meetings held in Brussels last week. One of those meetings was hosted by European Council President Charles Michel and lasted for more than four hours. Michel said afterwards that the two leaders pledged to de-escalate tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and restore rail links between their countries. But he admitted that they still disagree on the Nakhichevan road link sought by Baku. Speaking just hours before the December 14 meeting, Aliyev said people and cargo passing through that “Zangezur corridor” must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Pashinian swiftly rejected the demand. Pashinian said on Friday that Yerevan’s “red line” on the matter has not changed as a result of the Brussels talks. “Our fundamental position with regard to the highways remains the same,” he told a virtual news conference. “In Brussels, I and Azerbaijan’s president tried to go into details and understand the reason why we express such [different] positions because positions taken publicly are just the visible tip of the iceberg.” “When we went into details … I saw an opportunity to find some solutions whereby both our positions and the purely practical issues raised by Azerbaijan could be resolved,” he said. “But we have no agreement on this score.” “It’s just that after that meeting I saw some opportunities and we should try to use those opportunities so what we find a real compromise solution to this issue, which would not cross the red line regarding the highways which I have already mentioned,” added Pashinian. He said nothing about possible parameters of that compromise. Aliyev described the December 14 meeting as “productive” before meeting with Pashinian again on December 15. Aliyev, Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin reported major progress towards opening Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links after holding talks in the Russian city of Sochi on November 26. Putin said a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force will formalize their understandings in the coming days. However, the task force announced no agreements after meeting in Moscow on December 1. On December 6, Aliyev renewed his threats to forcibly open a land “corridor” to Nakhichevan. Yerevan condemned the threats and said they run counter to what they agreed on at Sochi. Both Aliyev and Pashinian have confirmed their participation in a summit of ex-Soviet states that will take place in Saint-Petersburg on December 28. The Armenian premier said he expects to talk to Aliyev on the sidelines of the summit. Court Blocks Election Of Vanadzor Mayor December 24, 2021 • Karine Simonian Armenia - The building of the Vanadzor municipality,December 13, 2021. A court blocked on Friday the first session of Vanadzor’s newly elected municipal council in what local opposition figures denounced as a government attempt to prevent their arrested candidate from becoming the mayor of Armenia’s third largest city. Mamikon Aslanian, who ran Vanadzor until October, was arrested on December 15 ten days after a bloc led by him all but won a local election with about 39 percent of the vote. Aslanian is facing corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party finished second with 25 percent, the most serious of setbacks suffered by it in the local polls held in 36 communities across Armenia on December 5. Three other parties fared much worse but still won seats in the local council empowered to appoint the next head of the municipality comprising Vanadzor and nearby villages. Another party, Bright Armenia (LHK), got 3.97 percent, narrowly failing to clear the 4 percent threshold to enter the council. The LHK challenged the official election results in court, saying that irregularities and inaccuracies artificially reduced the number of votes garnered by it. Armenia’s Administrative Court rejected the appeal earlier this week, paving the way for the Vanadzor council’s inaugural session scheduled for Friday. The LHK asked the Court of Appeals to overturn the ruling. An Administrative Court judge responded by issuing an injunction that bans the council from meeting and electing the mayor pending a Court of Appeals verdict on the lawsuit. The injunction was made public just minutes before the start of the council’s session. It was condemned by members of Aslanian’s bloc and the opposition Hayrenik party allied to it. Hayrenik’s local leader, Vahe Dokhoyan, accused the ruling party and the LHK of trying to steal their victory. “Bright Armenia is assisting in the theft of our votes,” Dokholian told journalists. “This is the opinion of the vast majority of Vanadzor residents.” The LHK, which was represented in Armenia’s former parliament but fared poorly in the June snap elections, denied cutting secret deals with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party. Armenia - Former Vanadzor Mayor Mamikon Aslanian. Aslanian’s bloc and Hayrenik will hold 15 and 2 seats respectively in the 33-member council, putting them in a position to install the head of a large community comprising Vanadzor and nearby villages in Armenia’s northern Lori province. However, the ex-mayor’s continuing detention deprives them of their razor-thin majority. It was not clear whether Civil Contract, which will control 9 council seats, hopes to strike a deal with the two other parties to be represented in the council. Lori Governor Aram Khachatrian, who led the ruling party’s list of local election candidates, insisted on Friday that it has not yet nominated or endorsed any mayoral candidate. Meanwhile, Aslanian urged Vanadzor factions to avoid “trampling electoral processes underfoot.” In a written appeal issued from jail, the ex-mayor said they must “make a choice stemming from the will of the people.” Artur Sakunts, a human rights activist based in Vanadzor, last week described the criminal proceedings launched against the ex-mayor as “political persecution.” He said the Armenian authorities are trying to distort local election outcomes in these and other communities. Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Arman Tatoyan, likewise accused the authorities of resorting to arrests and intimidation to gain control of communities where the ruling party failed to win outright. Pashinian’s political allies deny the accusations. Government Sticks To Mandatory COVID-19 Tests After Court Ruling December 24, 2021 • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia - Health Minister Anahit Avanesian visits the Armenian company Liqvor producing Sputnik Light vaccine, Yerevan, December 6, 2021. The Armenian government insisted on Friday that workers refusing vaccination will have to continue to take mandatory coronavirus tests despite a Constitutional Court ruling hailed by critics of the requirement. Health Minister Anahit Avanesian imposed the requirement on October 1 in an effort to speed up the slow pace of vaccinations in Armenia. Her initial directive obligated virtually all public and private sector employees to get inoculated against COVID-19 or tested twice a month at their own expense. Such mandatory testing now has to be done once a week. The requirement has been denounced by Armenians reluctant to get vaccinated as well as some opposition groups. A group of opposition parliamentarians challenged its legality in the Constitutional Court. Armenia - Anti-vaccine campaigners demosntrate in Yerevan, September 19, 2021. In a ruling publicized late on Thursday, the court party said the measure is partly unconstitutional. Citizens cannot be forced to pay for their tests, it said. Aram Vartevanian, a lawmaker from the opposition Hayastan alliance who led the appeal, welcomed the ruling. He said it means that the government must exempt ordinary workers from what he regards as exorbitant testing fees. The Armenian Ministry of Health offered a different interpretation of the court’s decision, however. “The Constitutional Court’s decision did not create any obligation for the state or the employer to pay for an employee’s PCR tests,” Anna Mkrtumian, the head of the ministry’s legal department, told reporters on Friday. Nor did the court scrap the testing requirement for anti-vaxxers, she said. In a separate statement on the ruling, the Ministry of Health likewise insisted that unvaccinated “workers will have to undergo tests in any case.” The government’s vaccination campaign accelerated significantly after the testing requirement took effect on October 1. Officials say this is one of the reasons why coronavirus infections in Armenia have fallen dramatically in recent weeks after reaching record levels this fall. Even so, the country’s vaccination rate remains low by international standards. Ministry of Health data shows that only some 643,000 people in the country of about 3 million were fully vaccinated as of December 19. More than 260,000 others received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Health Minister Avanesian said on Thursday that Armenian health authorities have not yet detected any cases of the new Omicron variant of the virus. 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.