Monday, Karabakh Halts Public Transport Due To Blockade • Susan Badalian Nagorno-Karabakh - People walk past a closed gas station in Askeran, July 18, 2023. Nagorno-Karabakh’s public transport system will be brought to a complete halt on Tuesday because of severe shortages of fuel caused by Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of the Armenian-populated region. Karabakh authorities said on Monday that they have run out of scarce fuel reserved from buses and minibuses. They already suspended earlier this month public transport in Stepanakert and curtailed bus services with other Karabakh towns and villages for the same reason. The vast majority of vehicles in Karabakh are powered by natural gas which was supplied from Armenia before being pressurized and sold at local gas stations. Azerbaijan disrupted a steady flow of the gas shortly after blocking commercial traffic through the Lachin corridor last December. A gas pipeline feeding Karabakh was most recently unblocked for just a few hours on July 8. Baku tightened the blockade on June 15, banning emergency relief supplies that were carried out by Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross through the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world. The move aggravated the shortages of food, medicine and other essential items experienced by the region’s population. The fuel crisis not only disrupted travel but also complicated food supplies inside Karabakh. Local farmers now have trouble taking their produce to markets, and there are growing problems with the delivery of flour to bakeries. Nagorno-Karabakh -- A banner in Stepanakert in July 2023. “It is very difficult to get the flour here,” Lyudmila Mezhlumian, a bakery worker in Stepanakert, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan warned last week that Karabakh is now “on the verge of starvation” as he urged stronger international pressure on Azerbaijan. The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly called for an end to the Azerbaijani blockade. Baku has dismissed their appeals. The humanitarian crisis is also affecting Karabakh’s struggling healthcare system. The head of an intensive care unit at Karabakh’s main children’s hospital said on Monday that it is increasingly hard for the parents of seriously ill children living outside Stepanakert to transport them to the facility. Baku has frequently banned evacuations of Karabakh patients to hospitals in Armenia carried out by only the ICRC during the blockade. It most recently unblocked them last week after requiring those patients to be checked by Azerbaijani medical personnel while passing through its checkpoint in the Lachin corridor. The Karabakh premier, Gurgen Nersisian, said at the weekend that Red Cross officials “somehow managed to convince” the Azerbaijani side not to film “that process.” Karabakh’s main security service said on Monday that local residents are receiving Russian-language phone calls offering to help them safely “go to Armenia via Baku.” It urged them to ignore the Azerbaijani “disinformation.” Armenian FM Visits Iran Iran - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi meets Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Tehran, . Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan discussed with Iran’s leaders Armenia’s ongoing peace talks with Azerbaijan and described the Islamic Republic as his country’s “special partner” during a visit to Tehran on Monday. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan briefed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on the “latest developments in the process of normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations” and reaffirmed the Armenian government’s position on the “establishment of lasting peace in the South Caucasus.” The issue also topped the agenda of his separate talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held earlier in the day. Mirzoyan complained about Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only land link with Armenia, saying that it is hampering a peace deal currently discussed by Baku and Yerevan. Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that, Mohammad Jamshidi, a top aide to Raisi quoted him as warning against U.S. involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. “These negotiations have to be carried out based on the interests of the [two] nations and without political conspiracies involving America and the Zionist regime [Israel,]” Raisi said, according to Jamshidi. In recent months, the United States has been at the forefront of international efforts to broker a comprehensive peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan. Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov held two rounds of intensive U.S.-mediated talks in May and June. They are scheduled to meet in Moscow on Tuesday for fresh talks that will be hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Russia has been very critical of the U.S. peace efforts, saying that their main goal is to squeeze it out of the region, rather than end the Karabakh conflict. Raisi was also reported to reaffirm Tehran’s strong opposition to any “geopolitical” border changes in the South Caucasus. Iranian leaders have frequently made such statements in response to Azerbaijan’s demands for an extraterritorial corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave that would pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering Iran. They have warned that the Islamic Republic would not tolerate attempts to strip it of the common border and transport links with Armenia. Mirzoyan praised Tehran’s stance on the “inviolability of our state borders” during a joint news briefing with Amir-Abdollahian. “For us, Iran has always been and remains and will continue to be a special partner, including in overcoming the challenges in the current difficult conditions,” he said. According to another Iranian news agency, Mehr, the Armenian minister assured Raisi that Armenia “will never become a platform for anti-Iranian actions” and remains committed to deepening Armenian-Iranian ties. Armenia’s Ruling Party Accused Of Electoral Foul Play • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at a congress of his Civil Contract party, Yerevan, October 29, 2022. An Armenian civic group has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party and local government officials affiliated with it of abusing their administrative resources to facilitate the party’s victory in forthcoming municipal elections in Yerevan. In an extensive investigative report released late last week, the Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) said that the administration of a major local community comprising the town of Spitak and surrounding villages is drawing up lists of its Yerevan-based natives promising to vote for Civil Contract and its mayoral candidate, Tigran Avinian, in the elections slated for September. It said the process is overseen by Gevorg Papoyan, the ruling party’s deputy chairman. The accusations are based on recorded phone calls between local officials and an UIC activist posing as an aide to Papoyan. The audio of those conversations was posted on the group’s fact-checking website. Spitak’s deputy mayor, Hovik Hovhannisian, and six village chiefs can be heard saying that they already have or will soon have such lists. Hovannisian says that he personally spoke to 30 relatives and other Spitak-born residents of Yerevan and that 23 of them assured him that they will vote for Pashinian’s party. In his words, Spitak officials explain to such voters “just how bad thing will be for them” if Civil Contract loses the polls. They hope to earn the party 1,000 votes in this way, he says, adding that Spitak Mayor Kajayr Nikoghosian is “100 percent” involved in the effort. Armenia - Gevorg Papoyan. Papoyan rejected the UIC report as slanderous and said he will file a defamation suit against the Western-funded organization. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend, the Civil Contract vice-chairman denied issuing election-related instructions to the authorities in Spitak or any other community. He said at the same time that the local officials are affiliated with Pashinian’s party and have a right to campaign for its election victory. The UIC leader, Daniel Ioannisian, countered that the officials admitted ordering their subordinates to participate in that campaign. “If this is not a case of abuse of administrative resources, then what is?” he said. Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General on Monday pledged to look into the UIC allegations after being asked by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service to comment on it. It is not clear why the prosecutors did not do that right after the release of the report. Ioannisian noted that such election-related practices were widespread under Armenia’s former governments and that Pashinian for years decried them. Pashinian and his political team claim to have eliminated electoral fraud in the country after coming to power in 2018. The prime minister regularly states that power finally “belongs to the people.” His political opponents dispute the claim. They expressed serious concern over the freedom and fairness of future Armenian elections after Pashinian installed last October a longtime ally, Vahagn Hovakimian, as chairman of the Central Election Commission. Hovakimian was a senior member of Civil Contract until the appointment. Opposition Lawmaker Sues Over Loss Of Parliament Post • Artak Khulian Armenia - Taguhi Tovmasian speaks druring a news conference in Yerevan, October 10, 2022. An opposition lawmaker has asked a court in Yerevan to reinstate her as chairwoman of the Armenian parliament’s standing committee on human rights. The parliament’s pro-government majority voted to oust Taguhi Tovmasian on July 11 on the grounds that she did not attend most meetings of the parliament’s leadership. It also claimed that Tovmasian did not stop “hate speech” when her committee discussed on April 4 candidacies for the then vacant post of Armenia’s human rights ombudsman. Edgar Ghazarian, the opposition candidate for the post, enraged pro-government deputies with his claim that the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power was in fact a “Turkish-Azerbaijani revolution.” They shouted abuse and threats at Ghazarian during the meeting chaired by Tovmasian. Tovmasian, who is affiliated with the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, maintains that that she did nothing wrong on April 4. She has also argued that the parliamentary statutes did not require her to attend meetings of the National Assembly’s Council consisting of speaker Alen Simonian, his deputies as well as the committee chairpersons. Tovmasian told reporters on Monday that she wants the court to invalidate her ouster condemned by Pativ Unem and the other parliamentary opposition force, the Hayastan alliance. She said it was “illegal” also because the parliament debated it in her absence. Tovmasian said she had notified the parliament in advance that she cannot attend the session because of being on sick leave. “They can’t silence me by removing me from the post of the committee chairperson,” added the former journalist and newspaper editor. Prior to her dismissal, Tovmasian was the last remaining opposition head of a parliament committee. Hayastan’s Ishkhan Saghatelian and Vahe Hakobian were ousted as deputy speaker and chairman of the parliament committee on economic affairs respectively in July 2022 after weeks of anti-government protests organized by Hayastan and Pativ Unem. Another Hayastan deputy, Armen Gevorgian, immediately resigned as chairman of a committee on “Eurasian integration” in protest. Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.