Thursday, May 6, 2021
Opposition Parties Confirm Alliance With Kocharian
May 06, 2021
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- The Armenian Revolutionary Federation holds a rally in Yerevan's
Liberty Square, May 23, 2019.
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and another opposition
party officially confirmed on Thursday that they will join forces with former
President Robert Kocharian to participate in snap parliamentary elections
expected in June.
“We will soon make a joint statement on the formation of the alliance, its name,
electoral list and other tasks,” Ishkhan Saghatelian, the head of
Dashnaktsutyun’s governing body in Armenia, said in a video address posted on
Facebook.
Saghatelian said the Dashnaktsutyun leadership has decided to team up with
Kocharian and the newly established party called Resurgent Armenia because they
have similar “visions for Armenia’s future.”
Dashnaktsutyun, which also has branches in Armenian Diaspora communities around
the world, was allied to Kocharian when he ruled the country from 1998-2008. It
is not represented in the current parliament, having garnered only about 4
percent of the vote in the last elections held in December 2018.
Resurgent Armenia announced the creation of the alliance in a separate
statement. It said the alliance will be led by Kocharian.
The party, which held its founding congress earlier this week, is led by Vahe
Hakobian, a former governor of Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province. Most of
its senior members are elected local government officials and other well-known
residents of the region sandwiched between Iran, Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan
exclave.
They have angrily challenged Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in recent months,
blaming him for Armenia’s defeat in the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh which
left Syunik facing serious security challenges.
The Resurgent Armenia statement said the “grave situation in Armenia and
Karabakh” is what necessitates the party’s electoral alliance with “like-minded
political forces.”
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian meets with supporters, Yerevan,
April 21, 2021.
Kocharian did not immediately comment on the announcements made by the two
parties. But he did say last month that he will lead a bloc comprising at least
two opposition parties. He expressed confidence that it will be Pashinian’s main
election challenger.
The announcements came the day after Levon Ter-Petrosian, who had served as
Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998, publicly urged Kocharian and another
ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, to team up with him and try to unseat Pashinian
in the upcoming polls. Ter-Petrosian said the incumbent prime minister’s
reelection would be “much more dangerous for Armenia than even possible or
hypothetical threats emanating from Azerbaijan and Turkey.”
Both Kocharian and Sarkisian were quick to turn down the proposal. Sarkisian
reaffirmed his Republican Party’s decision to form an alliance with another
opposition group led by Artur Vanetsian, a former head of Armenia’s National
Security Service.
Russia Vows No Letup In Karabakh Peace Efforts
May 06, 2021
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian meets with his Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Yerevan, May 6, 2021.
Russia will keep doing its best to ensure the full implementation of the
Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in
Nagorno-Karabakh, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to Yerevan
on Thursday.
“We are not reducing our efforts at returning all detainees to their homes,
demining, preserving cultural and religious heritage as well as launching the
work of relevant international organizations in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Lavrov said
after talks with his Armenian counterpart Ara Ayvazian.
In that context, he stressed the importance of Russian efforts to get Armenia
and Azerbaijan to open their transport links after decades of conflict. He said
a trilateral working group formed by the Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani
governments for that purpose is helping to further stabilize the situation in
the Karabakh conflict zone.
“The success of this work will be decisive for normalizing the overall situation
and laying the groundwork for creative cooperation in the post-conflict period,”
added Lavrov.
He further stated that Armenia and Azerbaijan are now also engaged in a
demarcation and delimitation of their internationally recognized border. Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials have repeatedly made
statements to the contrary.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Lavrov, Ayvazian reiterated the
official Armenian line that the conflict cannot be deemed resolved until the
conflicting parties agree on Karabakh’s status, the main bone of contention.
Yerevan says such an agreement must reflect peace proposals made by the OSCE
Minsk Group co-headed by Russia, the United States and France.
Armenia - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lays a wreath at the Armenian
genocide memorial in Yerevan, May 6, 2021.
Lavrov, who is due to visit Baku early next week, said the group’s chief
priority now must be to create an atmosphere of mutual trust.
In a joint statement issued on Wednesday, the Minsk Group co-chairs called for
“concrete steps to create an atmosphere of mutual trust conducive to
long-lasting peace.” They urged the parties to “fully and expeditiously complete
the exchange process for all prisoners, detainees, and remains, and to respect
their obligations to ensure the humane treatment of detainees.”
The statement came the day after Azerbaijan released three more Armenian
prisoners of war.
Baku remains reluctant to set free more than 100 other Armenian POWs and
civilian captives believed to remain in Azerbaijani captivity. Yerevan regards
this as a gross violation of the November 9 truce accord brokered by Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
Meeting with Pashinian later on Thursday, Lavrov said Russia will spare no
effort to secure the release of the remaining Armenian prisoners. “We are
confident that we will manage to solve this issue soon,” he said.
Lavrov also assured Pashinian that Moscow remains “committed to ensuring the
security of our ally, Armenia.”
Latvia Also Recognizes Armenian Genocide
May 06, 2021
Latvia – Latvian and European Union flags fly in the capital Riga.
Latvia’s parliament voted on Thursday to pass a resolution recognizing the
Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey and honoring its 1.5 million victims.
The resolution was drafted by the parliament’s foreign affairs committee and
approved by 58 votes to 11, with 7 abstentions.
It says that the mass killings and deportations of Armenians, which began with
the April 1915 mass arrests of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople,
constituted a genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman government. It notes that the
European Parliament first recognized the genocide in 1987.
The resolution also says Latvia believes that condemnation of all crimes against
humanity is important for preventing a repeat of such tragedies in the future.
Armenia’s outgoing ambassador to the Baltic state, Tigran Mkrtchian, hailed the
development and thanked Latvian lawmakers for “addressing this issue extremely
important for the Armenian people.”
“What was hard to imagine years ago became a reality today,” Mkrtchian wrote on
his Facebook page.
Predictably, the Latvian resolution was condemned by Turkey, which continues to
strongly a deny a premeditated government effort to exterminate the Ottoman
Empire’s Armenian population. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it is devoid of
“any legal basis.”
The vehement Turkish denials are dismissed by most scholars outside Turkey.
The Armenian genocide has also been recognized by the parliaments and/or
governments of three dozen other countries, including Latvia’s Baltic neighbor
Lithuania as well as the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Italy.
U.S. President Joe Biden used the word “genocide” in his April 24 statement on
the 106th anniversary of the World War One-era slaughter of Ottoman Armenians.
Pashinian’s Party Not To Form New Election Bloc
May 06, 2021
Armenia - Campaign posters of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's Civil Contract
party are displayed in Yerevan, May 5, 2021.
A senior member of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party said on Thursday that
it will not form an alliance with other political allies of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian to participate in upcoming parliamentary elections.
“The Civil Contract party will participate in the elections as a separate party,
rather than in an alliance,” Lilit Makunts, the leader of the party’s
parliamentary group, told journalists.
Pashinian set up such an alliance ahead of the last elections held in December
2018. The bloc dominated by his party and called My Step won 70 percent of the
vote at the time.
Makunts refused to shed light on the list of Civil Contract’s candidates for the
snap polls expected in June. “I will just say that there will be new people on
our electoral list,” she said without naming any of them.
Pashinian pledged in March to call the vote amid renewed anti-government
protests staged by opposition forces blaming him for Armenia’s defeat in last
year’s war with Azerbaijan and demanding his resignation. He and his cabinet
stepped down for that purpose on April 25.
Under the Armenian constitution, early elections must be held within two months
if the prime minister resigns and the National Assembly twice fails to elect
another head of the government.
In what was the first step towards its dissolution, the parliament controlled by
Pashinian did not reelect him or install another premier on Monday. It is due
vote again on May 10.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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