Category: 2019

                                        Friday, 

Armenian, Azeri Leaders ‘Agree To Ease Tensions’

Turkmenistan -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani 
President Ilham Aliyev attend a meeting of heads of the Commonwealth of 
Independent States (CIS) in Ashgabat, October 11, 2019

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev 
have promised more efforts to “prepare the populations for peace,” 
international mediators said after ending a fresh tour of the Nagorno-Karabakh 
conflict zone late on Thursday.

The U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group met with 
Pashinian and Aliyev during their latest trips to Yerevan, Stepanakert and Baku.

“The two leaders briefed the Co-Chairs on their recent conversation during the 
CIS summit in Ashgabat and presented their ideas on how to advance the 
settlement process,” read a joint statement issued by the mediators. “The 
Co-Chairs welcomed the prospect of implementing specific humanitarian and 
security measures to prepare the populations for peace and reduce tensions.”

The mediators shed no light on those measures. They said they urged the 
conflicting parties to remove “obstacles potentially interfering with” the work 
of a small OSCE mission monitoring the ceasefire regime along the Karabakh 
“line of contact” and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. They did not specify 
what those obstacles are and who created them.


Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) meets with OSCE Minsk Group 
co-chairs, Yerevan, 15Oct2019.

Aliyev and Pashinian already agreed to take “a number of measures in the 
humanitarian field” and help create “an environment conducive to peace” when 
they met in Vienna in March. There seems to have been no further progress in 
the negotiation process since then.

The two leaders publicly traded barbs during the October 11 summit of former 
Soviet republics held in Turkmenistan’s capital. Still, they reportedly talked 
to each other at great length at an official dinner hosted by Turkmen President 
Gurbaguly Berdymuhamedov.

In their statement, the mediators also announced that the Armenian and 
Azerbaijani foreign ministers “confirmed their intention to meet again under 
Co-Chair auspices before the end of the year.” The Russian co-chair, Igor 
Popov, said in Stepanakert on Wednesday that the talks could be held in 
December.

Like Aliyev and Pashinian, the two ministers have met on a regular basis over 
the past year, most recently in New York late last month. In an interview with 
the Russian newspaper “Izvestia” published on Thursday, Azerbaijan’s Elmar 
Mammadyarov said he is “a bit disappointed” with the results of the New York 
talks.

“If we want to move forward and really want a political settlement of this 
dispute then we should start … ‘substantive negotiations,’” said Mammadyarov. 
He complained that the mediators believe such talks are contingent on a further 
decrease in shooting incidents on the frontlines. More serious truce violations 
there did not prevent Baku and Yerevan from making progress in their past 
negotiations, he said.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry dismissed Mammadyarov’s criticism on Friday.




Armenian Government Denies Additional Concessions To Ryanair

        • Naira Nalbandian

UKRAINE -- Passengers get off a Ryanair Boeing 737-8AS aircraft at the Boryspil 
International Airport near Kyiv, September 3, 2018

Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian insisted on Friday that the government did 
not make far-reaching financial concessions to the Ryanair in return for the 
Irish low-cost airline’s decision to launch flights to Armenia.

After months of negotiations with the government, Ryanair announced on 
Wednesday that it start flying from Yerevan to Milan and Rome in January and 
open two more routes next summer. The announcement was widely welcomed in 
Armenia, with government officials predicting a significant drop in the cost of 
air travel and major boost to the domestic tourism sector.

Ryanair’s decision is understood to be tied to government plans to exempt the 
company from a fixed $21 tax levied from every air ticket sold in the country. 
The tax break will also apply to any other airline that will launch flights to 
new destinations from Armenia.

Some travel bloggers and public figures said that the government has also made 
other, more significant concessions to Ryanair. In particular, they claimed 
that it will pay for the Irish carrier’s airport ground services in Armenia 
worth around $80 per passenger. Such a subsidy would presumably require 
millions of dollars in annual government funding.

Avinian denied those claims. “We are not giving Ryanair any additional 
privileges at taxpayers’ expense,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

Avinian said that the government is only planning some financial incentives for 
airlines that will fly to Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city whose 
international airport is much smaller and more underused than Yerevan’s 
Zvartnots airport. He gave few details of that “additional support.”

Ryanair is due to launch flights between Gyumri and the southern German city of 
Memmingen in the summer of 2020.

The government also hopes to attract other European budget airlines, notably 
Wizz Air, to Armenia. Tatevik Revazian, the head of Armenian Civil Aviation 
Committee who negotiated the agreement with Ryanair, indicated on Wednesday 
that it is close to reaching a similar deal with Wizz Air.




Armenian High Court Chief’s Relatives Questioned By Security Service

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia -- Supporters of Constitutional Court Chairman Hrayr Tovmasian protest 
outside the National Security Service headquarters in Yerevan, .

The National Security Service (NSS) interrogated Hrayr Tovmasian’s father and 
two daughters on Friday one day after another law-enforcement agency launched 
separate criminal proceedings against the embattled chairman of Armenia’s 
Constitutional Court.

The NSS said it decided to seek “explanations” from his close relatives and 
other individuals during “the preparation of materials” for a potential 
investigation. It gave no other details in a short statement issued amid 
opposition allegations that the Armenian government is targeting Tovmasian’s 
family as part of its efforts to force him to resign.

A lawyer for the family, Hayk Sargsian, said NSS officers asked Tovmasian’s 
daughters questions mainly relating to their assets, notably a car and a garage 
which they received as a gift from a cousin who emigrated to the United States 
in 2016.

Sargsian said they also inquired about another car which one of the young women 
owned until donating it to Nagorno-Karabakh’s army around the same time. 
Neither woman was asked questions about her father’s activities, he told 
reporters after the interrogations.

Tovmasian’s father Vartan was questioned at the NSS headquarters in downtown 
Yerevan earlier in the day. According to his lawyer, Amram Makinian, NSS 
officers asked him questions about the roof of his one-story house located in a 
village near Yerevan. In particular, he said, they wondered when it was 
repaired and who financed that work. The 75-year-old told them that he fixed 
the roof at his own expense and with the help of his neighbors, added the 
lawyer.

NSS officers already visited and talked to Vartan Tovmasian at his home in the 
village of Darakert on Thursday. He said they were mainly interested in the 
house roof.

The NSS sent summonses to Tovmasian’s father and daughters as Armenia’s Special 
Investigative Service (SIS) launched a criminal inquiry into a possible 
“usurpation of power” by the Constitutional Court chairman and former senior 
officials.

Such an inquiry was demanded by a lawmaker who alleged recently that Tovmasian 
colluded with key members of Armenia’s former leadership to illegally become 
head of the court in March 2018. The SIS has not charged anyone so far. Under 
Armenian law, Tovmasian cannot be prosecuted without the consent of at least 
five of the nine Constitutional Court justices.

Seven of those judges issued on Friday a joint statement saying that they are 
“monitoring developments relating to Hrayr Tovmasian and members of his family 
and will react if need be.”

The Constitutional Court refused to oust its chairman as recently as on 
Tuesday. The Armenian parliament called for his dismissal in an October 4 
appeal to the court drafted by its majority loyal to Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian. The parliament accused Tovmasian of mishandling appeals lodged by 
the arrested former President Robert Kocharian. It also cited his past 
membership in the former ruling Republican Party (HHK).

Opposition politicians and other critics claim that Pashinian’s government is 
now using law-enforcement bodies in its efforts to force Tovmasian to step 
down. Several dozen of them, including senior HHK figures, rallied outside the 
NSS building in downtown during Friday’s interrogations.

“The only state structure which more or less protects the constitution and 
serves the Republic of Armenia, rather than Nikol Pashinian’s regime, is the 
Constitutional Court,” claimed Eduard Sharmazanov, the HHK spokesman. “What is 
happening now is [the result of] a fabricated political order.”

“It emerged yesterday that our authorities took a step, which is at odds with 
not only the rule of law but also morality, in order to achieve their political 
objective of getting rid of Hrayr Tovmasian,” said Ruben Melikian, a lawyer and 
Karabakh’s former human rights ombudsman.

Pashinian’s political allies strongly denied, however, that Tovmasian is 
persecuted for political reasons.

“I can understand representatives of the rejected [former] authorities,” said 
Vahagn Hovakimian, a parliament deputy from the ruling My Step bloc. “They see 
things within the bounds of their mental horizon, namely [imagine] what they 
themselves had done.”

“Nobody is subjected to political persecution,” Hovakimian told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service. He argued that relatives of Armenian state officials do not 
have legal immunity from prosecution.

Tovmasian himself has not yet commented on the latest developments. He claimed 
on October 2 that the authorities want to force him out in order to gain 
control over Armenia’s highest court.




Senior Government Official Resigns


Armenia -- Sarhat Petrosian, head of the Cadaster Committee, at a meeting in 
Yerevan, October 14, 2019.

The head of a government agency regulating Armenia’s real estate market 
resigned on Friday, citing policy differences and “dilettantism” of senior 
officials in charge of urban development in the country.

The official, Sarhat Petrosian, is a well-known architect and public figure who 
was appointed as head of the Cadaster Committee in the wake of last year’s 
“Velvet Revolution” in which he actively participated. The committee maintains 
a state registry of real estate and registers property deals.

“I do not agreed with our government’s policy and existing approaches in the 
area of urban development which I believe encompasses the cadaster sector as 
well,” Petrosian said in a statement.

“Despite the unprecedented upswing registered in the real estate market [since 
the revolution] we have regressed in the area of urban development,” he said, 
accusing the current and former heads of the government’s Urban Development 
Committee of imitating meaningful activities.

Petrosian complained that he has had only sporadic influence on government 
policies. “As head of a government agency and urban development architect by 
education, I can no longer tolerate dilettantism and sectarianism bordering on 
corruption,” he said.

Petrosian did not give examples of mismanagement alleged by him. He said he 
will talk about concrete cases “in the future.”

The 37-year-old official also thanked Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for 
appointing him to the post and engineering last year’s “incredible change” in 
Armenia.

“I continue to regard the changes of 2018 as one of the most important 
achievements in the modern history of the Armenian people which must be 
preserved, developed and spread so as to not allow stateless opportunists to 
discredit or use them for personal welfare,” concluded the statement.

Pashinian’s office did not immediately react to the announcement of Petrosian’s 
resignation.




Press Review


“Aravot” says that the Armenian authorities must not target Hrayr Tovmasian’s 
family in their drive to oust the chairman of the Constitutional Court 
Chairman. It says that Tovmasian for years “served” Armenia’s former 
leadership, rather than “the state and the law,” and must therefore not 
continue to sit on the country’s highest court. The newspaper editor believes 
that his resignation is a “political and ethical” issue. “Should it also have 
criminal consequences?” he writes. “I don’t know. Even if it should, only 
Tovmasian, and not his father and children, must be held accountable. 
Disturbing his relatives can leave the impression of psychological pressure 
aimed forcing Tovmasian to step down after the Constitutional Court’s refusal 
to do so.”

“Zhamanak” says that many Armenians were shocked by this week’s killing of an 
on-duty police officer in Yerevan by suspected robbers. The paper says that 
Tigran Arakelian’s death could spur a public debate on the role of Armenian 
law-enforcement bodies and their radical reform.

“Haykakan Zhamanak” looks at the “propaganda war” which it says is waged 
against the Armenian government. “One gets the impression that some invisible 
hand is consistently raising tensions in Armenia-Artsakh relations,” writes the 
pro-government paper. “And they do that in a quite inept fashion … They spread 
false rumors that Nikol Pashinian addressed Bako Sahakian as ‘Mr. Governor’ and 
try to cinch a tough reaction to that from Artsakh’s military circles. That is 
to say that they are playing a very dirty game aimed at heightening tensions 
between Armenia and Artsakh.” It points the finger at Armenia’s former rulers, 
saying that they latter are desperate to return to power.

(Lilit Harutiunian)

 
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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