Monday,
Armenian Government’s Pick For Constitutional Court Criticized
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Vahram Avetisian, Yerevan, July 23, 2020.
Relatives of protesters killed during the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan
and supporters of former President Levon Ter-Petrosian have deplored the
Armenian government’s choice of a candidate to replace one of the three
Constitutional Court judges controversially dismissed last month.
The government formally nominated Vahram Avetisian, a senior law professor at
Yerevan State University (YSU), to the court last week and expects the Armenian
parliament to confirm him in the coming weeks. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
My Step bloc enjoys a comfortable majority in the National Assembly.
Eight relatives of the unrest victims and 50 current and former activists
imprisoned during the 2008 crackdown on the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition issued
at the weekend a joint petition urging the government to withdraw Avetisian’s
nomination.
In particular, the signatories, among them several senior members of
Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) party, argued that his father,
Davit Avetisian, upheld prison sentences handed to opposition members and
supporters when he served as a senior Court of Cassation judge from 2008-2016.
They said that Vahram Avetisian cannot act independently and impartially also
because he has never publicly condemned Armenia’s former ruling regime and its
use of force against protesters who challenged the official results of the
February 2008 presidential election in which Ter-Petrosian was the main
opposition candidate.
One of the signatories, Grigor Voskerchian, is a member of the HAK’s governing
board who was arrested in 2008 and spent 18 months in prison. “My personal
interest is to see an independent person elected to the Constitutional Court,”
he said.
“If [Avetisian] is appointed a Constitutional Court judge he will definitely
deal with some issues related to his father,” Voskerchian told RFE/RL’s Armenian
service on Monday. “If he doesn’t want to bear responsibility for [decisions
made by] his father he should make a statement.”
Avetisian dismissed the objections to his candidacy on Sunday, saying that they
are fuelled by individuals motivated by their “parochial and factional
interests.” In a Facebook post, the nominee said he finds it “pointless” to
argue with them.
Responding to the criticism, Pashinian’s press secretary, Mane Gevorgian, said
the government’s decision to pick Avetisian was based on his professional
background and track record. “Mr. Avetisian’s candidacy will be discussed in the
National Assembly, and deputies will have a chance to ask all questions
preoccupying the public and receive answers to them from Mr. Avetisian,” said
Gevorgian.
Lilit Makunts, My Step’s parliamentary leader, said she and other pro-government
lawmakers will likely meet Avetisian next week and ask him to set the record
straight. Makunts stressed at the same time that Avetisian has “no direct
connection” with any of the politically motivated court verdicts stemming from
the 2008 bloodshed and arrests.
Pashinian played a key role in Ter-Petrosian’s 2007-2008 opposition movement and
was among the ex-president’s political allies imprisoned in the post-election
crackdown. He fell out with Ter-Petrosian after being released from jail in 2011.
President Armen Sarkissian and an assembly of Armenia’s judges are due to name
two other nominees for the Constitutional Court.
The parliament approved last month constitutional amendments calling the gradual
resignation of seven of the court’s nine members installed before April 2018.
Three of them are to resign with immediate effect. Also, Hrayr Tovmasian must
quit as court chairman but remain a judge.
Tovmasian and the ousted judges have refused to step down, saying that their
removal is illegal. They have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) to have them reinstated.
Azerbaijan, Turkey To Hold Joint War Games
• Emil Danielyan
Azerbaijan -- Azerbaijani and Turkish troops hold a joint military exercise, May
1, 2019.
The armed forces of Azerbaijan and Turkey will start joint exercises on
Wednesday two weeks after deadly hostilities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border
which led Ankara to promise more military assistance to Baku.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced on Monday that the “large-scale”
exercises will involve warplanes and artillery and air-defense systems. It did
not specify the number of soldiers that will take part in them.
A ministry statement cited by Azerbaijani news agencies said ground forces of
the two states will simulate joint operations in Baku and Azerbaijan’s
Nakhichevan exclave from August 1-5. It said separate drills involving the
Turkish and Azerbaijani air forces will be held in these and three other
locations from July 29 through August 10.
The ministry also said that the war games will take place in accordance with a
Turkish-Azerbaijani defense treaty and an annual plan of bilateral military
cooperation. It did not link them with the July 12 outbreak of heavy fighting at
a western section of Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia which lasted for several
days and left at least 17 soldiers dead.
Turkey - Turkish and Azerbaijani flags displayed during joint exercises held by
the air forces of the two countries near Konya, 3Ma32015.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed concern over the drills. A ministry
spokeswoman said they are part of Baku’s “provocative actions” aimed at
obstructing international mediators’ efforts to de-escalate the situation at the
border and kick-start Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
Turkey has blamed Armenia for the flare-up and reaffirmed its full support for
Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Yerevan has decried the Turkish
reaction, accusing Ankara of trying to destabilize the region, undercutting
international efforts to resolve the conflict and posing a serious security
threat to Armenia.
Immediately after the border clashes, a high-level Azerbaijani army delegation
flew to Ankara for talks with Turkey’s top military and defense industry
officials. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told it that the Armenians “will
certainly pay for what they have done” to his country’s main regional ally.
Another Turkish official expressed readiness to supply Turkish-made military
drones and missiles to the Azerbaijani army.
Such statements fuelled speculation about a direct Turkish intervention in the
Karabakh conflict. Successive Armenian governments have relied on a military
alliance with Russia and, in particular, the presence of a Russian military base
in Armenia to prevent such a scenario. The base has up to 5,000 soldiers mostly
deployed along the closed Armenian-Turkish border.
Analysts believe Moscow would strongly oppose Turkish military presence in a
region regarded by it as a zone of Russian geopolitical influence. Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Ankara to exercise restraint in its
reaction to the upsurge in Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions when he spoke with his
Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu by phone on July 23.
Armenia - Armenian and Russian troops hold joint military exercises.
The Turkish and Azerbaijani militaries have held joint exercises on an annual
basis for the last several years. They will apparently combine ground troop
maneuvers with air force drills for the first time.
Russian-Armenian exercises are also held regularly. A military official in
Yerevan said last week that an Armenian army regiment and the Russian troops in
Armenia will take part in Russia’s Caucasus-2020 war games scheduled for
September.
In preparation for these drills, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered on
July 17 a snap "combat readiness check" of some 150,000 troops deployed in
Russia’s southern and western military districts bordering. Azerbaijani Defense
Minister Zakir Hasanov telephoned his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoygu the
following day to discuss the military event. Shoygu reportedly assured him that
it is not connected with the latest escalation in the Karabakh conflict zone.
Armenia, Azerbaijan Urged To Restart Peace Talks
Armenia -- Armenian soldiers hold a military exercise in Tavush province
bordering Azerbaijan, July 21, 2020.
U.S., Russian and French mediators have urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to gear up
for “serious substantive negotiations” on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict after recent deadly clashes on their border.
In a weekend statement, the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group also
welcomed the current “relative stability” along a section of the border where
heavy fighting broke out on July 12 and left at least 17 soldiers from both
sides dead.
The hostilities largely stopped on July 16. The conflicting parties have since
reported sporadic ceasefire violations mainly involving small arms.
An Armenian army soldier, Ashot Mikaelian, was shot dead at the volatile border
section early on Monday in what the Defense Ministry in Yerevan described as
Azerbaijani sniper fire.
“The Co-Chairs appeal to the sides to take advantage of the current reduction in
active hostilities to prepare for serious substantive negotiations to find a
comprehensive solution to the conflict,” read the statement. “The Co-Chairs
stress once more that refraining from provocative statements and actions,
including threats or perceived threats to civilians or to critical
infrastructure, is essential during this delicate period.”
“The Co-Chairs note that recent public statements criticizing the joint efforts
of the co-chairing countries, and/or seeking unilaterally to establish new
“conditions” or changes to the settlement process format are not conducive to
resuming a constructive dialogue,” it said.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev lambasted the mediators and threatened to
withdraw from further peace talks just days before the flare-up on the border
between Armenia’s northern Tavush province and Azerbaijan’s Tovuz district.
Aliyev specifically blasted their regular assertions that the Karabakh conflict
cannot be solved militarily.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs,
Yerevan,27May,2019
For his part, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said last Thursday that
Karabakh must become a “full-fledged party to negotiations” mediated by the
Minsk Group co-chairs. The remark led Azerbaijan to claim that Armenia is
seeking to change the format of peace talks. Baku has long refused to directly
negotiate with the disputed territory’s ethnic Armenian leadership.
In their latest statement, the mediators -- Andrew Schofer, Igor Popov and
Stephane Visconti -- expressed readiness to meet soon with Aliyev and Pashinian
“or their designees.” Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, they have not
visited the conflict zone or met Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders elsewhere,
organizing instead two video conferences with the foreign ministers of the two
warring nations.
The American, Russian and French envoys also emphasized that they continue to
stand for a Karabakh settlement the key elements of which they had laid out in a
March 2019 statement.
In that statement they said that “any fair and lasting settlement” must involve
“return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control;
an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and
self-governance; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; future
determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally
binding expression of will.”
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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