Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

                                        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
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