Monday,
Armenia Also Imposes Omicron Travel Ban
• Robert Zargarian
Syringes with needles are seen in front of a displayed stock graph and words
"Omicron SARS-CoV-2" in this illustration taken, November 27, 2021.
Armenia will temporarily bar entry of residents of South Africa and seven other
regional states in a bid to protect its population against the new coronavirus
variant Omicron, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said on Monday.
The heavily mutated variant first detected in South Africa earlier this month is
believed to be highly transmissible and potentially resistant to coronavirus
vaccines. It now seems to be spreading around the world, leading many countries
to impose travel restrictions.
Avanesian said the Armenian government will take similar measures affecting
citizens of South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Mozambique,
Zimbabwe and Madagascar.
“The entry of people from these countries to the Republic of Armenia will be
temporarily restricted,” she told a news conference.
The minister echoed concerns about Omicron’s possible ability to evade existing
vaccines protecting people against COVID-19. Still, she made clear that the
government will continue to encourage Armenians to get inoculated.
According to the Armenian Ministry of Health, only about 436,400 people in the
country of about 3 million have been fully vaccinated to date.
Avanesian announced that after weeks of deliberations the government has decided
to introduce on January 1 a mandatory health pass for entry to cultural and
leisure venues. Only those people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or
have had a recent negative test will be allowed to visit bars, restaurants and
other public venues, she said.
The daily number of officially confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Armenia
began declining about two weeks ago after several months of steady increase that
overwhelmed the national healthcare system. The Ministry of Health recorded 189
cases and 21 deaths on Sunday, the lowest figures reported in weeks.
Court Extends Arrest Of Former Armenian Defense Minister
• Artak Khulian
Armenia -- Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan at a news conference in
Yerevan, April 9, 2019.
A court in Yerevan has extended the pretrial detention of Davit Tonoyan, a
former defense minister facing corruption charges strongly denied by him.
Tonoyan, two generals and an arms dealer were arrested by the National Security
Service (NSS) two months ago in a criminal investigation into supplies of
allegedly outdated rockets to Armenia’s armed forces. The NSS charged them with
fraud and embezzlement that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($4.7
million). All four suspects deny any wrongdoing.
Tonoyan’s lawyers again dismissed the accusations as baseless on Monday in
response to a weekend court ruling allowing NSS investigators to hold Tonoyan in
pretrial detention for two more months. In a statement, they claimed that the
investigators lack “professional knowledge” of weaponry and ammunition and are
simply keen to discredit the former defense minister.
“We again want to bring the political leadership’s attention to the
non-objective investigation conducted with regard to Davit Tonoyan,” they said.
The NSS said in September that a private intermediary delivered the rockets to
Armenia in 2011 and that the Defense Ministry refused to buy them after
discovering that they are unusable.
Seyran Ohanian, Armenia’s defense minister from 2008 to 2016, confirmed
afterwards that they were not accepted by the military during his tenure.
Ohanian, who is now a senior opposition lawmaker, said the rebuff forced the
supplier to store them at a Defense Ministry arms depot.
Citing the secrecy of the ongoing probe, the NSS has declined to publicly
specify the date of the supply contract subsequently signed by the Defense
Ministry or give other details.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appointed Tonoyan as defense minister just days
after coming to power in May 2018. Tonoyan was sacked in November 2020 less than
two weeks after a Russian-brokered agreement stopped the Armenian-Azerbaijani
war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Some senior pro-Pashinian parliamentarians blamed him for Armenia’s defeat in
the six-week war. The prime minister faced angry opposition demonstrations at
the time.
New Power Plant Inaugurated In Armenia
• Emil Danielyan
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other officials attend the
inauguration of a newly built power plant in Yrevan, .
A German-Italian consortium inaugurated on Monday a thermal power plant built by
it in Yerevan as part of a $270 million project approved by the Armenian
government.
The 254-megawatt facility is expected to enable Armenia to use less natural gas
for electricity generation. It will also diversify foreign ownership in the
country’s energy sector.
The ArmPower consortium consists of a subsidiary of Germany’s Siemens group and
two Italian companies. One of them, Renco, is the main engineering, procurement
and construction contractor in the project.
Renco had supposedly launched the project in March 2017 with a ground-breaking
ceremony attended by then President Serzh Sarkisian.
Armenia’s current government froze, however, Renco’s contract with the Sarkisian
administration shortly after taking office in May 2018. It said the deal is not
beneficial for the Armenian side and must be renegotiated.
The two sides signed a revised deal in November 2018. Armenian officials said at
the time that the Renco-led consortium agreed to cut its electricity tariff by 5
percent. That, they said, will allow Armenia to save $160 million in energy
expenses over the next 25 years.
Armenia -- The site of a new power plant built by a German-Italian consortium in
Yerevan, July 12, 2019.
Work on the new power plant began in earnest in July 2019 four months after
ArmPower secured more than $200 million in loans and loan guarantees from
several international lenders, notably the Washington-based International
Finance Corporation (IFC).
The plant was inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and
Renco’s chief executive, Giovanni Rubini. An Armenian government statement on
the ceremony said its electricity will be cheaper than power supplies coming
from other gas-powered plants that currently meet roughly one-third of Armenia’s
energy needs.
One of them was constructed in Yerevan in 2010 with a $247 million loan provided
by Japan. The state-owned facility has a capacity of 242 megawatts.
Renco has done business in Armenia since the early 2000s. It was not involved in
the local energy sector until its latest project, investing instead in luxury
housing, hotels and office buildings. But the Italian company has built,
installed or operated power generation and distribution facilities in other
parts of the world.
Court Upholds Acquittal Of Kocharian
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at a news conference,
Yerevan, October 4, 2021.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals has rejected prosecutors’ demands to overturn a lower
court’s decision to throw out controversial coup charges that were brought
against former President Robert Kocharian.
Kocharian and three other former officials were prosecuted in connection with
the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Anna Danibekian, a district court
judge presiding over their trial, acquitted them in early April ten days after
the Constitutional Court declared the charges unconstitutional.
The trial prosecutors appealed against the acquittal. They demanded that the
Court of Appeals allow investigators to charge the defendants with abuse of
power and order Danibekian to resume the coup trial.
The Court of Appeals rejected the prosecutors’ appeal in a ruling announced late
on Friday. One of Kocharian’s lawyers, Hovannes Khudoyan, welcomed the decision.
A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that
the law-enforcement agency will look into the ruling before deciding whether to
appeal to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice.
Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired army
generals have said all along that the coup charges leveled against them are
politically motivated. Lawyers representing them maintain that Danibekian’s
decision to clear them of the alleged “overthrow of the constitutional order”
stemmed from Armenian law.
The judge also ruled on April 6 that Kocharian and Gevorgian will continue to
stand trial on separate bribery charges which they also strongly deny. Court
hearings on that case resumed in July.
Kocharian, who is highly critical of Armenia’s current leadership, was first
arrested in July 2018 shortly after the “velvet revolution” that brought Nikol
Pashinian to power. He was set free on bail in June 2020.
The 67-year-old ex-president set up an opposition alliance in May this year. It
finished second in parliamentary elections held in June.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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