Author: John Hovhannisian

President Serzh Sargsyan has signed a decree appointing Karen Karapetyan as Prime Minister of Armenia.

The government stepped down earlier today. The Ministers will continue to perform their duties until a new government is formed.

On 9 May President Bako Sahakyan together with President Serzh Sargsyan of the Republic of Armenia and NKR second President Arkady Ghukasyan attended the premiere of the “Thirteen”  documentary film dedicated to the four-day April war.

Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, National Assembly Chairman Ashot Ghoulyan, Prime Minister Arayik Haroutyunyan, high-ranking officials from Artsakh and Armenia were present at the event.

Photo: Reuters

 

More than 100 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded in a Taliban attack on an army base on Friday, the defence ministry has confirmed, the

Fighting lasted for several hours near the city of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Balkh province.

Insurgents targeted those leaving Friday prayers at the base’s mosque and others in a canteen, the army said.

The Taliban said in a statement they had carried out the attack, using suicide bombers to breach defences.

Earlier estimates put the death toll as high as 134, but a statement from the defence ministry on Saturday gave the figure of more than 100 killed or injured.

It is one of the deadliest tolls in a Taliban attack on the Afghan army.

At least 10 Taliban militants were also killed in the fighting and one attacker was detained.

Photo: AP

 

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been freed from detention, six years after being overthrown, the BBC reports.

Mr Mubarak left a military hospital in southern Cairo and went to his home in the northern suburb of Heliopolis, his lawyer said.

He was ordered freed earlier this month after Egypt’s top appeals court cleared him over the deaths of protesters in the 2011 uprising.

Mr Mubarak, 88, became president in 1981 after Anwar Sadat’s assassination.

He had been at Maadi Military Hospital since 2013, when he was transferred there on bail from Torah prison.

Mr Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in 2012 of complicity in the killing of protesters who died at the hands of security forces in February, 2011.

Another trial was held and a judge decreed in May 2015 that Mr Mubarak could be released from detention.

An Armenian official delegation headed by Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian attended the reopening of the Jesus tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Attending the event were Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, high-ranking officials from other countries, Christian church leaders, thousands of pious people.

Earlier the day Minister Nalbandian had visited the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to meet with Patriarch, Archbishop Nurhan Manukian.

Archbishop Nurhan Manukian delivered a speech at the ceremony along with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos II. A message from His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, was read out.

The tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried was unveiled today following nine months of restoration.

Three main Christian denominations – Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches – jealously guard separate sections of the church, but they put aside their longstanding religious rivalries to give their blessing for the restoration. Armenian architects were involved in reconstruction works.

Azerbaijan is trying to undermine and fail the agreements on Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement reached in Vienna and St. Petersburg, Spokesman for the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Balayan has said. “Speaking about the resumption of talks or about negotiations being frozen by Armenia is at least hypocrisy,” Balayan told .

The comments come after Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov accused the Armenian side of having stopped the negotiations on the Karabakh conflict settlement.

“Negotiations with Armenia on Nagorno-Karabakh are currently stopped,” Mammadyarov said, speaking at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

He then accused Armenia of refusing from negotiations. “We proposed to continue substantive negotiations, but the Armenian side does not go for it. On April 2, parliamentary elections will be held in Armenia. We proposed to hold talks after this date,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister said.

“This fully meets the logic of Azerbaijan’s non-constructive provocative policy,” Tigran Balayan said.

“It’s well known that after the aggression of April 2, 2016 the international community was insisting on the need to create conditions conducive to the continuation of negotiations,” the Spokesman said. He reminded that two summits were organized in Vienna and St. Petersburg, where concrete agreements were reached on creation of those conditions.

He added, however, that Azerbaijan refuses to implement the agreements and keeps preventing their implementation. “Therefore, speaking about the resumption of negotiations or about talks being frozen because of the Armenian side is at least hypocrisy,” Tigran Balayan stated.

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs have been informed about the Azerbaijani offence attempt.

“Armenia informed OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries on Azerbaijan offensive attempt,” the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a Twitter post.

The Azerbaijani side used special equipment as it in the southeastern and eastern directions of the line of contact at 03:00 and 04:00 respectively

– Armenian institutions in Argentina have issued a joint statement “rejecting” the visit of the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, to Argentina and South America.

“Not only is Çavuşoğlu the representative of the State that committed the crime against humanity, but his figure constitutes the executing arm of the negationist policy historically adopted by Turkey,” denounces the text, noting that as Minister of Foreign Affairs “Çavuşoğlu devoted his work to intimidate anyone who recognizes or even names the Armenian Genocide, as were the cases of Russia, the European Parliament and the Vatican in 2015 and Germany and the United States in 2016.”

“On several occasions, Çavuşoğlu repeated that any pronouncement on the matter not coming from the parties (Armenia-Turkey) prejudices the reconciliation between the two peoples. However, they only criticize the statements that are not ‘favorable’ to Turkey, as they do not issue statements when the Azerbaijani denialist president, Ilham Aliyev, speaks of the ‘Armenian lies’, for example. Another pattern of double standard and lies of Çavuşoğlu are seen in what they call ‘just memory,’ a concept very similar to the infamous ‘theory of the two demons’ in Argentina, when they appeal to ‘the sufferings of all parties’ as a new stage of negationism. This implies that Armenians and Turks were two different parties to a conflict, and did not constitute a State-citizen relationship. Çavuşoğlu went on to say that Pope Francis ‘discriminated between the sufferings’ when he spoke of the Armenian Genocide.”

“We consider that his work as Minister of Foreign Affairs consists solely in exporting the model of censorship to freedom of expression maintained by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against his own people,” said the statement. “This is evidenced in the many occasions when Turkish diplomacy lobbied to block resolutions of solidarity with the Armenian people throughout the region of South America.”

“Law 13.326 of Uruguay and Law 26.199 of Argentina, as well as resolution 550/2015 of the Federal Senate of Brazil are pillars of the Human Rights policy in our region, and they form an indispensable standard. In this context, we urge the authorities responsible for the foreign policy of our countries to avoid joining any of the manifold manifestations of the negationism and totalitarianism of the Turkish State,” finished the statement.

Ethnic Armenian Zhano Gorachyan, 20, has been killed in clashed in the outskirts of Aleppo, reports, quoting its sources.

Zhano was serving in the Syrian Army along with his brother Remo, the source says.

Three people have been released without charge by French police investigating a Paris jewellery robbery that targeted TV reality star Kim Kardashian West, the BBC reports.

They include her chauffeur in Paris, Michael Madar. The three were among 17 people arrested in co-ordinated raids across France on Monday.

The driver’s brother is still being questioned by police, reports say.

Kardashian West was held at gunpoint and tied up by the robbers while staying at a hotel in Paris in October.

She was targeted at the exclusive flat near Place de la Madeleine while her bodyguard looked after her sister at a nightclub.

The gang stole €9m of jewellery, including a diamond ring valued at around €4m.