President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Monday sent a cable of greetings to his Armenian counterpart Armen Vardani Sarkissian on the occasion of his country's Independence Day.
Presidential Secretary Hossam Zaatar was delegated to the Armenian Embassy in Cairo to convey Egypt's greetings on this occasion.
15:21, 5 October, 2021
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Committee Sasun Khachatryan met with US Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy.
At the meeting the US Ambassador said the fight against corruption is the field where the cooperation of Armenia and the United States is close and constant, adding that now as well the US is ready to work with this new structure to deepen this cooperation. The Ambassador stressed the need of ensuring the independence and transparency of the activity of the Anti-Corruption Committee.
Introducing the Committee’s upcoming actions and challenges, Sasun Khachatryan mentioned four main components which would enable to record substantive results in the fight against corruption. Those components, according to him, are the will, the hard work, the professional knowledge and the material-technical base. He highlighted introducing the positive experience of the United States in works relating to international legal mutual support.
At the end of the meeting the sides agreed to make joint efforts to expand the cooperation in the fight against corruption.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
The talented Armenian is currently on a four-fight win streak in the UFC. After his rough debut against Islam Makhachev in April 2019, the Armenian quickly redeemed himself by securing unanimous decision victories over Olivier Aubin-Mercier, Davi Ramos and Matt Frevola in his next three fights.
Since then, Tsarukyan hasn’t looked back.
The No.13-ranked 155-pound contender was in action earlier this month at UFC Vegas 37.
Going into this fight, Tsarukyan knew he would need a knockout before he could call any bigger name in the division. And he did exactly that by knocking out Christos Giagos emphatically in the first round with just 2:09 on the clock.
With this victory, his tally of wins has risen to four with just one loss in the UFC.
Recently, Tsarukyan has developed a fierce feud with New Zealander Hooker. The two have a short history of bad blood between them.
After his strings of wins in the UFC, Tsarukyan called out Hooker, which he responded by labeling him a “dumbass.” This remark did not go very well with the Armenian.
While talking to MMA News, the Armenian revealed what Hooker has told him if his fight with Nasrat Haqparast didn’t happen at UFC 266 for any reason.
“He texted something like, ‘If you have balls, you gonna fight with me now.’ But he knows I had an (injury), I got injured after this fight, and I broke my ribs. That’s why he started speaking. But if he didn’t know about my injury, for sure he wouldn’t (say that).”
“He’s a tough opponent, and I’m tough, too,” he added. “And we had a conversation (with) each other, and I think UFC can do this part. And a lot of people know about me and him, and everyone wants to see this fight.”
Tsarukyan further stated that he would like to fight Tony Ferguson in December if the fight with Hooker doesn’t go to the plan.
In a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stressed the need to launch cooperation with Iran in the oil industry and energy sector.
Hailing the close and growing relations between Yerevan and Tehran, he urged that Armenia-Iran Joint Commission should convene as early as possible.
For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian described mutual cooperation in the energy sector as an important section of economic interaction between the two neighbors.
Tehran is ready to host Armenia’s energy minister to discuss the capacities for cooperation, he added.
In separate messages to Armenian President Armen Sarkissian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on September 21, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi expressed his administration’s willingness to boost relations with Armenia in various fields, saying closer mutual cooperation will fulfill the interests of the two neighbors and strengthen regional security and stability.
Friday,
Armenian Parliament Approves Community Enlargement
• Karine Simonian
Armenia - Deputies from the ruling Civil Contract party preside over
parliamentary hearings on a controversial enlargement of Armenia's communities
sought by the government, Yerevan, September 22, 2021.
In a move strongly condemned by its opposition minority, the National Assembly
approved on Friday a controversial government proposal to merge the vast
majority of Armenian cities and villages into much bigger communities.
A government bill passed by lawmakers will turn 441 existing communities into 38
administrative units that will resemble districts. Armenia will have a total of
79 communities, including the capital Yerevan, as a result.
Most of the current communities already consist of multiple villages and/or
small towns consolidated by the former Armenian government.
The current government has opted for a further community consolidation, saying
that it will make local self-government and budgetary spending on communities
more efficient.
Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Gnel Sanosian
defended the measure during a parliament debate. He said government experts have
concluded that good governance and socioeconomic development is highly
problematic in rural communities with fewer than 3,000 residents.
Sanosian assured their residents that every small Armenian village will retain
its administration subordinate to the wider community leadership. “No settlement
in Armenia will be liquidated or renamed,” he said.
Many elected community heads are strongly opposed to the consolidation. The
country’s two main opposition groups have also denounced it as arbitrary and
unfounded.
Lawmakers representing them walked out of the parliament at the start of
Friday’s debate in protest against what they called an unconstitutional bill.
Hayk Mamijanian of the opposition Pativ Unem bloc claimed that the government is
pushing through the bill to get rid of elected local officials affiliated with
or sympathetic to opposition parties.
Government officials have denied any political reasons for the community
enlargement.
Armenian Speaker’s Brother Wins Government Contracts
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia- Speaker Alen Simonian chairs a session o f the National Assembly,
Yerevan, September 13, 2021
A road construction company run by parliament speaker Alen Simonian’s brother
has won in the last few months two government contracts worth $1.4 million,
raising suspicions of a conflict of interest and even corruption.
The investigative publication Hetq.am revealed this week that the relatively
small firm called EuroAsphalt won a recent government tender for paving rural
roads around Aparan, a small town in Armenia’s central Aragatsotn province. It
signed a relevant contract with the local government on September 19 after
pledging to carry out the road works for 287 million drams ($595,000).
In June, EuroAsphalt was contracted by the Armenian Ministry of Territorial
Administration and Infrastructures to repair country roads in northwestern
Shirak province. The repairs were supposed to cost the state 386 million drams.
EuroAsphalt had an authorized capital of just over $100 when it was founded by
two little-known individuals in 2018. Simonian’s brother Karlen became its
executive director early this year.
Karlen Simonian also manages another construction company called EuroAsphalt-1.
It was registered in February 2021 and was worth 140 million drams at the time.
Deputy Prime Minister Suren Papikian, who served as minister of territorial
administration until recently, insisted on Thursday that EuroAsphalt won the two
contracts as a result of transparent and fair tenders, rather than its chief
executive’s government connection.
“If people have information about corruption schemes, let them make it public,
for God’s sake,” said Papikian.
Civic activists see a cause for concern, however. Varuzhan Hoktanian of the
Armenian affiliate of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International
said that the integrity of tenders won by individuals linked to state officials
has long been in serious doubt in Armenia. He said an Armenian Finance Ministry
division in charge of state procurements must therefore scrutinize the contracts
granted to EuroAsphalt.
“When such tenders are won with amazing consistency by relatives or cronies of
state officials there are corruption risks involved,” agreed Artur Sakunts, a
veteran human rights campaigner. “This must definitely become a subject of
investigation.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for years alleged corrupt practices in the
administration of tenders won by such individuals when he was in opposition to
Armenia’s former governments. He claimed to have eliminated “systemic
corruption” in the country after coming to power in 2018.
Alen Simonian is a close associate of Pashinian. A spokeswoman for the
parliament speaker told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday that he will not
comment on his brother’s business activities for now. She said at the same time
that he is ready to answer questions submitted in writing.
Simonian also raised eyebrows when he appointed a businessman and friend of his
as chief of the Armenian parliament staff days after becoming its speaker in
August.
The businessman, Vahan Naribekian, owns a company supplying furniture to the
National Assembly and various government and law-enforcement agencies. According
to Hetq.am, the company has won 148 supply contracts since the 2018 regime
change.
Karabakh Conflict Unresolved, Insists Armenia
• Astghik Bedevian
Nagorno Karabakh -- Pedestrians walk past a poster bearing a flag of
Nagorno-Karabakh in Stepanakert on November 24, 2020,
Official Yerevan dismissed on Friday Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s fresh
claim that Azerbaijan ended the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with its victory in
the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November.
“The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a thing of the past,” Aliyev declared on late
on Thursday, addressing a session of the UN General Assembly.
“Azerbaijan no longer has an administrative-territorial unit called
Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said, adding that the international community should stop
using the Armenian-populated territory’s name.
“The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved,” countered Armen Grigorian,
the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council. “The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s
status still awaits a solution and we see that solution within the framework of
the OSCE Minsk Group.”
The U.S. ambassador to Armenia, Lynne Tracy, has repeatedly made similar
statements in recent weeks.
“We do not see the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as having been resolved,” Tracy
insisted on September 13 in remarks condemned by the Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry.
Aliyev ruled out on July 22 any negotiations on Karabakh’s status, saying that
Yerevan must instead recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the disputed
territory.
Later in July, the U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the Minsk
Group issued a joint statement calling for a “negotiated, comprehensive, and
sustainable settlement of all remaining core substantive issues of the
conflict.” They said the conflicting parties should resume talks “as soon as
possible.”
The Karabakh issue was on the agenda of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s
talks with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian held on Thursday on the
sidelines of the UN General Assembly. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry,
the two men reaffirmed their governments’ intention to continue to strive for
“stabilizing the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, first and foremost in the OSCE
Minsk Group format.”
Le Drian also met separately in New York with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan.
Yerevan Still Hopeful About Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Armen Grigorian, the secretary of the Security Council, at a news
conference in Yerevan, .
The Armenian government still hopes to normalize Armenia’s relations with Turkey
despite apparent preconditions set by Ankara, a senior official in Yerevan said
on Friday.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, said Yerevan is
ready to start a Turkish-Armenian “dialogue without preconditions” and discuss
all thorny issues during a “gradual” normalization process.
Grigorian did not explicitly deny that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian offered
earlier this month to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “We
believe that a dialogue at a high and the highest levels is one of the ways of
normalizing those relations,” he told reporters.
Erdogan claimed last week to have received the offer from Pashinian through
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili. He appeared to make such a meeting
conditional on Armenia agreeing to open a transport corridor that would connect
Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.
In his earlier comments on Yerevan’s overtures to Ankara, Erdogan cited
Azerbaijan’s demands for a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Asked about the apparent Turkish preconditions, Grigorian said: “The Armenian
side has stated on numerous occasions … that relations with Turkey should be
normalized without preconditions because whenever there are preconditions it’s
hard to make progress on any issue. So we hope that the normalization of
relations will be without preconditions.”
Armenian opposition leaders have denounced what they see as Pashinian’s secret
overtures to Erdogan. They say that Ankara continues to make the establishment
of diplomatic relations with Yerevan and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian
border conditional on a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement favorable to Baku.
Turkey provided decisive military assistance to Azerbaijan during the six-week
war in Karabakh stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
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Ten months after the defeat of Armenian forces against Azerbaijan in the war for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Armenia is seeing its border regions come under threat from Baku.
Citing the official Yerevan, France 24 says hundreds of Azerbaijani soldiers have entered Armenian territory since mid-May 2021, particularly in the Syunik and Gegharkunik border provinces.
The situation is sparking concern and even panic in Armenia, particularly in villages close to the frontier, where incidents are frequent, the France 24 team on the ground reports.
“When I realized I could not go into my vegetable garden anymore, I went mad. Just how far are they going to go? I will never get used to it. What do they want from us Armenians? Who is this Aliyev [Azerbaijani President] to mock my nation like this?” Anahit Alekyan, an Armenian woman from the village of Shurnukh, tells France 24 in an interview.
The woman says she needs neither help nor money.
“I want my land and my house back,” she says, tearfully.
Shurnukh Mayor Hakob Arshakyan, whose house has also fallen under Azerbaijan’s control, says he feels a lot of pain.
Azerbaijanis stopped a microbus transporting children of Artsakh in the Vorotan sector of the Goris-Kapan road of Armenia today. This is what Deputy Mayor of Goris Karen Kocharyan said during a conversation with Armenian News-NEWS.am.
“The logo of Artsakh, the picture of a monument (“Papik-Tatik”) and the national flag were seen on the bus. There were about 25 children in the bus. The Azerbaijanis stopped the bus, told everyone to get off in a very obscene manner and started inspecting the bus. Luckily, Russian border guards noticed the children and saw them off,” Kocharyan said.
Deputy Mayor Kocharyan didn’t know whether the microbus was moving towards or coming from Artsakh.
After placing a police checkpoint in the Vorotan section, the Azerbaijanis have been stopping Iranian truck drivers and letting them go after inspecting them and charging money. Two days ago, Azerbaijanis detained two Iranian drivers, and today they stopped a driver who was taking bread to soldiers. The driver continued the road with the accompaniment of Armenian and Russian border guards.
What problems do the displaced Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) families have? How many of them resettled in Artsakh? How many of them found refuge in Armenia? What sources of income do they have? What are the priority issues that need to be addressed? Artsakh Public Television reports that the Artsakh National Statistical Service has conducted a survey on this and many other issues, and the results of this survey have already been summed up.
Leonid Soghomonyan, head of the Research and Studies Department of the Artsakh National Statistical Service, says that 986 households were surveyed, and 408 of them were from urban areas. Accordingly, 51.6% of the surveyed households remained in Artsakh, whereas 48.4% moved to Armenia—and they relocated primarily to urban areas.
Also, the surveyed households have lost houses and apartments worth a total of 15.7 billion drams, furniture worth a total of 5 billion drams, economic facilities worth a total of 1.9 billion drams, plots of land worth a total of 1.6 billion drams, and cars worth a total of 1.3 billion drams.
"The degree of sovereignty of both Armenia and Azerbaijan has sharply reduced with the recent Artsakh war, which has in turn impacted the sovereignty of another neighboring state – Georgia, although that is not that visible at first look," political scientist Stepan Danielyan wrote on his Facebook.
Danielyan went further suggesting another war could potentially remove all formal attributes of sovereignty. "Azerbaijan is currently in euphoria and has not fully perceived the reality," added the political scientist.
He added that the more the level of sovereignty is diminished, the more are the efforts of the governments to mark independence days.
17:35, 6 September, 2021
YEREVAN, 6 SEPTEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs “Armenpress” that today, 6 September, USD exchange rate down by 0.17 drams to 493.48 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.79 drams to 585.27 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate down by 0.02 drams to 6.76 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 0.08 drams to 682.98 drams.
The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.
Gold price up by 167.00 drams to 28934.37 drams. Silver price down by 1.88 drams to 381.65 drams. Platinum price up by 89.73 drams to 15960.94 drams.