Monday,
Pashinian Urges End To Mine Site Blockade
Armenia - Gold mining facilities constructed by Lydian International company at
Amulsar deposit, 18 May 2018.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Monday called on protesters to unblock roads
leading to a massive gold deposit in southeastern Armenia, saying that his
government has no “legal grounds” to ban its development by a Western mining
company.
Pashinian said that failure to allow the company, Lydian International, to mine
gold at the Amulsar deposit would have severe consequences for Armenia’s
economy and even national security. He also argued that Lydian has given the
Armenian government more guarantees that mining operations there would not
contaminate water, soil and air.
“As it stands, we have no legal grounds to prohibit the exploitation of the
Amulsar mine,” Pashinian declared in a 40-minute video message aired on
Facebook and primarily addressed to residents of Jermuk, a resort town close to
the would-be gold mine.
“I am asking residents of Jermuk to unblock all roads leading to Amulsar
because you don’t need to block the roads, because if your government sees a
legitimate need to block those roads it will do that with its levers, legal
powers vested in it,” he said.
“I am convinced that on this issue we will adopt a common position and will not
make mistakes that will create complications for our country,” he added.
Armenia -- Protesters block a road leading to Amulsar mine, July 2, 2018.
Pashinian appealed to the protesters, who disrupted the construction of a gold
mine and smelter at Amulsar more than a year ago, after a series of emergency
meetings with government and law-enforcement officials, Lydian’s top executives
and environmental activists held in recent days.
The meetings followed the release of ambiguous findings of an independent
environmental audit of the Amulsar project conducted by ELARD, a Lebanese
consulting firm hired by the Armenian government.
ELARD sent a 200-page written report to Armenia’s Investigative Committee a
month ago. According to the law-enforcement body, the report concluded that
Lydian’s operations would pose only “manageable” risks to the environment. It
said that toxic waste from the Amulsar mine is extremely unlikely to
contaminate mineral water sources in Jermuk or rivers and canals flowing into
Lake Sevan.
But at an August 24 video conference with Armenian officials moderated by
Pashinian, ELARD experts said they cannot definitively evaluate environmental
dangers of the project. They claimed that Lydian had submitted flawed and
incomplete information to regulatory authorities before obtaining its mining
license in April 2016. The British-American company responded by accusing the
Lebanese consultants of misleading the government.
Lydian’s interim chairman, Edward Sellers, and top Armenian executive, Hayk
Aloyan, met with Pashinian on Friday. They also attended on Saturday a meeting
with senior government officials chaired by Pashinian.
The prime minister said on Monday that they made fresh assurances to the effect
that “not a single liter of toxic water” would be leaked during gold production
at Amulsar. He said his government will not hesitate to stop mining operations
and even revoke Lydian’s license if the company fails to honor these
commitments.
Pashinian also stressed in that context that he has instructed the
Investigative Committee and the government’s Inspectorate Body on Environment
Protection and Natural Resources to look into the “questions” raised by the
ELARD experts.
Armenia -- Edward Sellers (L), interim chief executive of the British-American
company Lydian International, at a meeting with Armenian officials chaired by
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, September 7, 2019.
A government decision to pull the plug on the multi-million project now, he
went on, would seriously undermine Armenia’s credibility with foreign investors
and broader “economic security.” He specifically warned of downward revisions
of the country’s international credit ratings, saying that this would push up
the cost of borrowing in the country. The Amulsar blockade is already “creating
very serious problems” for Armenia,” he added.
Pashinian also implicitly mentioned Lydian’s threats to take international
legal action against Yerevan. The company headquartered in Colorado and listed
on the Toronto Stock Exchange claims to have invested $400 million in Amulsar.
Lydian planned to produce 210,000 ounces of gold, worth over $315 million at
current international prices, annually. It pledged to create about 800
permanent jobs and pay $50 million in annual taxes.
The company was due to start mining gold at Amulsar in late 2018. The blockade,
which began in June 2018, delayed those plans indefinitely.
Pashinian cited Lydian’s top executives as telling him that their company will
not be able to launch the mining operations before the beginning of 2021 if it
regains access to Amulsar now. He said Lydian will also need several months of
preparation to resume the construction of its gold mining and smelting
facilities, which began in August 2016.
Prosecutors, Kocharian Lawyers Disagree On High Court Ruling
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian (C) and two other prosecutors at
the opening session of former President Robert Kocharian's trial in Yerevan,
May 13, 2019.
Prosecutors and lawyers for Robert Kocharian have offered differing
interpretations of the Constitutional Court’s decision to partly accept an
appeal filed by Armenia’s jailed former president.
Kocharian’s lawyers had challenged the legality of two articles of the Armenian
Code of Procedural Justice invoked by investigators accusing him of taking
bribes and overthrowing the constitutional order shortly before the end of his
decade-long rule in 2008.
The Constitutional Court ruled that one of those articles is unconstitutional
because it does not take account of current and former senior Armenian
officials’ immunity from prosecution guaranteed by the country’s constitution.
But it upheld the other clause that spells out legal grounds for arresting
criminal suspects.
The defense lawyers portrayed the ruling as a confirmation of their claims that
Kocharian’s arrest and prosecution is illegal. They petitioned a district court
in Yerevan on Saturday to free their client and clear him of the charges.
The court has not yet reacted to the petition yet. It is scheduled to resume on
Thursday Kocharian’s high-profile trial interrupted nearly four months ago.
Meanwhile, Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General insisted on Monday that
the Constitutional Court did not declare the criminal case against Kocharian
null and void. According to its interpretation of the ruling, it is up to
investigators and the judge presiding over the trial to determine whether the
ex-president’s legal immunity extends to the accusations leveled against him.
Article 140 of the Armenian constitution says: “During the term of his or her
powers and thereafter, the President of the Republic may not be prosecuted and
subjected to liability for actions deriving from his or her status.”
In a statement, the prosecutors stood by their position that this
constitutional provision does not apply to Kocharian’s decision to use army
units against opposition protesters in Yerevan in the wake of a disputed 2008
presidential election.
The statement also accused the ex-president’s lawyers of distorting the essence
of the Constitutional Court’s decision.
One of the lawyers, Hovannes Khudoyan, countered that the prosecutors
themselves are misinterpreting the ruling. “I would advise the Office of the
Prosecutor-General to again familiarize itself with that judicial act in order
to finally understand what it is all about,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
Yerevan Hails ‘Free Elections’ In Karabakh
• Artak Khulian
Nagorno-Karabakh - The main government buildings in Stepanakert, September 7,
2019.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian praised on Monday local elections held in
Nagorno-Karabakh at the weekend, saying that they were “free, fair and
competitive.”
Voters in Karabakh elected the mayors of the capital Stepanakert and other
Karabakh towns and villages as well as local councils. The mayoral race in
Stepanakert was tight, with five candidates participating in it.
One of them, Davit Sargsian, was elected mayor with 36.4 percent of the vote,
according to official results. The city’s incumbent mayor, Suren Grigorian, did
not seek reelection.
“I congratulate the heroic people of Artsakh on the holding of free, fair and
competitive elections of local government bodies,” Pashinian wrote on Facebook.
“I also congratulate all elected candidates and wish them fruitful work for the
benefit of the homeland and the people.”
Pashinian also commended election observers from Karabakh and Armenia, saying
that they contributed to the proper conduct of the polls.
Two of those vote monitoring missions were deployed by the Yerevan-based Union
of Informed Citizens (UIC) and Transparency International’s affiliate
organization in Armenia. At Pashinian’s urging, the Armenian government
allocated 33.7 million drams ($70,000) to them for that purpose on August 22.
The premier said the funding is part of his government’s efforts to “create
additional safeguards” for democracy in Karabakh.
Observers representing the two non-governmental organizations did not report
serious irregularities.
“Our monitoring team did not witness obvious and deliberate violations that
could influence the course of the elections or cast shadow on their results,”
said Vahram Tokmajian, head of the UIC’s Stepanakert office. He also said
Karabakh election officials cooperated with the monitors and swiftly responded
to “issues” in some polling stations reported by them.
Karabakh’s Central Election Commission said, for its part, that it has received
no reports of serious fraud during and after Sunday’s voting. It reported that
nearly two-thirds of Karabakh’s 103,000 eligible voters participated in the
polls.
Karabakh will hold presidential and parliamentary elections early next year.
Its incumbent president, Bako Sahakian, is not eligible for another term in
office. He has been in power since 2007.
Neither Sahakian nor Pashinian has endorsed any potential presidential
candidates so far. Speaking at an August 5 rally in Stepanakert, Pashinian said
the Armenian government will act as a “guarantor” of the freedom and fairness
of the 2020 polls.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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