Friday,
Armenian Utility Said To Cut Energy Price For Poor Families
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - A newly refurbished energy distribution facility in Gyumri, 13Sep2014.
Armenia’s national electric utility has promised a 25 percent reduction in the
price of electricity supplied by it to low-income families, Energy Minister
Artur Grigorian announced on Friday.
Grigorian said the Electricity Networks of Armenia (ENA) operator agreed to the
price cut as a result of “negotiations” held with the Armenian Ministry of
Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources. The tariff will go down “at the
expense of ENA’s profits” and cost the company 2 billion drams ($4.1 million)
in annual revenue, he said.
Speaking after a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan, the minister told reporters
that the discount will apply to at least 110,000 families and most probably
take effect on July 1. He insisted that ENA was not pressurized by the
government into cutting the tariff.
The daytime electricity price for poor households is currently set at 40 drams
(over 8 U.S. cents) per kilowatt/hour. It will fall to 30 drams per
kilowatt/hour, according to Grigorian.
ENA declined to immediately confirm this information. The utility is owned by
the Tashir Group of Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian.
Tashir seems to have significantly reduced ENA’s massive losses since
purchasing the debt-ridden company from a state-run Russian energy giant, Inter
RAO, in 2015. It has also pledged to make substantial capital investments in
the aging power distribution network.
During the cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian told Grigorian to
continue exploring possibilities of also cutting the electricity price for the
rest of the country’s population. It currently pays almost 45 drams per
kilowatt/hour.
Grigorian cited “a number of risks” complicating an across-the-board price cut.
In particular, he argued that the nuclear power plant at Metsamor will be
brought to a halt soon for prolonged capital repairs designed to extend the
life of its sole reactor. Armenia will have to rely on more expensive energy
generated by natural gas during the stoppage.
The energy minister also pointed out that a Russian-Armenian agreement on the
price of Russian natural gas supplied to Armenia expires at the end of this
year. He thus did not exclude that the gas price will be raised next year.
Pashinian Calls For ‘New Impetus’ To Armenian-Iranian Ties
• Emil Danielyan
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) meets with Iranian Ambassador
Seyed Kazem Sajjad in Yerevan, 8 June 2018.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian reaffirmed on Friday his government’s stated
intention to maintain and even deepen Armenia’s cordial relations with
neighboring Iran.
“We will make utmost efforts to further develop bilateral partnership,”
Pashinian told the Iranian ambassador in Yerevan, Seyed Kazem Sajjad.
“We are interested in giving new impetus to Armenian-Iranian ties on the basis
of mutual interests,” he said in remarks publicized by his press office.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani likewise called for closer ties between the
two nations when he phoned Pashinian a week after the latter was elected
Armenia’s prime minister on May 8. An official Armenian readout of the phone
call said the two leaders agreed to “further deepen mutually beneficial
partnership in all areas.”
A statement by Pashinian’s office said the Armenian premier and Sajjad
discussed the implementation of bilateral energy projects, including the
ongoing construction of a new power transmission line and long-standing plans
to build a hydroelectric plant on the Armenian-Iranian border. It said they
also touched upon broader commercial ties, with the Iranian ambassador
stressing the importance Iran’s provisional free-trade agreement with the
Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) signed last month.
Pashinian was quick to hail that deal, saying that it “fully” reflects
Armenia’s national interests. “We hope that it will stimulate our commercial
ties [with Iran,]” he told reporters on May 17.
Iran - An Iranian honor guard displays Iranian and Armenian national flags at
an official ceremony in Tehran, 7 August 2017.
Armenian manufacturers have long complained that the Islamic Republic’s
protectionist policies severely limit their access to the Iranian market.
According to official Armenian statistics, Armenian-Iranian trade stood at a
modest $263 million last year. The authorities in Yerevan hope that a free
economic zone created near Meghri, an Armenian town on the Iranian border, last
December will also boost it significantly.
The Iran-EEU deal was signed just days after the United States decided to
re-impose economic sanctions on Tehran after pulling out of a 2015
international agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. Rouhani and Pashinian
reportedly discussed implications of U.S. President Donald Trump’s
controversial move.
In its comprehensive policy program approved by the Armenian parliament on
Thursday, Pashinian’s government pledged to seek the kind of “special
relationship” with Iran which would be “immune to other geopolitical influences
as much as possible.” The program says Armenia will at the same time seek to
bolster its “friendly partnership” with the U.S.
Due to the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the resulting closure of
Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, Iran has long been one of the
landlocked country’s two commercial conduits to the outside world. Successive
Armenian governments have therefore been keen to maintain a warm rapport with
Tehran.
Arrested Yerevan Protesters Set Free
• Tatev Danielian
Armenia - Rresidents of Sari Tagh neighborhood of Yerevan clash with riot
police, 19 July 2016
Five residents of a Yerevan neighborhood who clashed with riot police during a
hostage crisis in 2016 have been released from custody.
The Sari Tagh neighborhood overlooks a police base in the city’s Erebuni
district which was seized by radical opposition gunmen demanding the
resignation of then President Serzh Sarkisian and the release of the leader of
their Founding Parliament movement, Zhirayr Sefilian. Three police officers
were killed before the gunmen laid down their weapons at the end of a two-week
standoff with Armenian security forces.
During the standoff several dozen male residents of Sari Tagh protested against
a police blockage of roads leading to their blue-collar neighborhood imposed
for security reasons. They also voiced support for the armed oppositionists
holed up in the Erebuni police facility.
The protesters clashed with police officers deployed in Sari Tagh in July 2016.
Ten of them were subsequently arrested and charged with assaulting
law-enforcement officers, a crime punishable by between 5 and 10 years in
prison. They went on trial last year, denying any wrongdoing.
A Yerevan court on Thursday agreed to free one of the defendants pending the
outcome of the continuing trial. Four other defendants were set free on Friday.
One of them, Harutiun Torosian, attributed their release to the recent change
of government in Armenia. He also said that he will continue to plead not
guilty to the accusations.
Relatives and lawyers of the five other defendants hope that they too will be
set free in the coming days.
Ex-Aide Regrets Obama’s Failure To Recognize Armenian Genocide
• Artak Hambardzumian
Armenia - Samantha Power (C), the former U.S ambassador to the UN, visits the
Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan, 8 June 2018. (Photo courtesy of
www.auroraprize.com)
Samantha Power, a former special adviser to President Barack Obama, on Friday
expressed regret at his failure to ensure an official U.S. recognition of the
1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey during his tenure.
Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) in Yerevan, Power said
Obama did not honor a key election campaign pledge because he did not want to
jeopardize a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey and feared that Ankara
could obstruct U.S. efforts to defeat the Islamic State extremist group.
Power, who advised Obama on foreign policy and human rights before serving as
U.S. ambassador to the United States from 2013-2017, also blamed the “very
volatile personality” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Obama referred to the Armenian genocide as a “widely documented fact supported
by an overwhelming body of historical evidence” when he ran for president in
2008. He said that if elected he will officially recognize the World War
One-era slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.
During that presidential race, Power famously recorded a five-minute video that
urged Americans of Armenian descent to vote for Obama because of his stance on
the genocide issue.
“I have great regret that we did not manage to go all the way to full
recognition in the way that we had promised,” Power told RFE/RL during her
first-ever visit to Armenia. “I really believed going into the White House that
we would.”
“But in 2009, which was really the year that we would have done it right at the
beginning, President Obama made clear that his view of the facts had not
changed and everybody knew his view,” she said. “But he felt that the
Armenian-Turkish normalization was at a very important and very fragile stage.
“Then, I think, at the hundred anniversary [of the genocide in 2015,] when it
would have been another opportune time to recognize, we had just been granted
access to Turkish bases to fight ISIS (Islamic State).”
“Turkey is a very powerful and large country that’s a NATO ally and has a lot
of weight,” added the former U.S. official. “President Erdogan of course is a
very volatile personality. So that also meant that some of the threats that he
made were deemed more credible frankly.”
Armenia - Samantha Power speaks at a panel discussion in Yerevan, 8 June 2018.
Power made clear that she thinks none of these factors justified Obama’s
decisions. “There is really no excuse because, as I wrote before I became a
U.S. government official, there really is never a good time to do it,” she
said. “There is always going to be some set of issues and equities on the other
side of the argument.”
Obama reportedly came very close to recognizing the genocide in an April 2015.
While avoiding the politically sensitive word, he implicitly praised Pope
Francis for calling the 1915 mass killings “the first genocide of the 20th
century.” He also paid tribute to Henry Morgenthau, America’s World War One-era
ambassador in Constantinople who tried to stop what he saw as a “campaign of
race extermination.”
Obama’s 2015 statement followed a reportedly heated debate within his
administration. The Associated Press reported at the time that an explicit
recognition of the Armenian genocide was advocated by administration officials
who deal more directly with human rights issues. Power was said to be among
them.
Power said on Friday that the current and future U.S. administrations should
follow the example of two dozen other nations and “defy the bullying that
genocide deniers have done.” Asked whether she thinks President Donald Trump
may do so, she said: “Trump is so volatile. Maybe we wake up one morning and
there’ll be the tweet that we’ve all been waiting for: recognizing the
genocide.”
In any case, the former Obama administration official went on, Armenians should
keep fighting for greater international recognition of the genocide. They have
already made major progress in that endeavor, she said, arguing that “there is
almost nobody in any doubt around the world about the events of 1915.”
Power was visiting Armenia as a new member of an international committee that
will select this weekend the latest winner of an annual humanitarian award
created in memory of the Armenian genocide victims.
The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity award was established in 2015 by three
prominent Diaspora Armenians: philanthropists Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar
Afeyan, and Vartan Gregorian, the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. It is designed to honor individuals around the world who risk their lives
to help others.
Press Review
“Zhamanak” comments on Thursday’s parliament debate on the policy program of
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government submitted to the National Assembly.
The paper singles out Pashinian’s remark that he is willing to delay fresh
parliamentary elections by several months in order to give other political
forces a better chance of doing well in them. It welcomes this stance, while
saying that Armenia has already entered a pre-election period.
“Zhoghovurd” notes that the debate was marred by “cruel” and “humiliating”
verbal attacks on deputies from Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK)
launched by their colleagues from Gagik Tsarukian’s alliance. “This was
certainly expected,” writes the paper. “The Tsarukian Bloc had old scores to
settle with a number of Republicans. And since the HHK has lost power but is
continuing to mock opponents Republicans got a riposte, a fairly cruel and
humiliating.” It says that as much as they are logical such manifestations are
“dangerous” and must be avoided by the new government.
“Hayots Ashkhar” is unimpressed with the government program, saying that it
looks more like an election campaign manifesto. “The government program starts
with a glorification of the ‘velvet revolution’ in Armenia and ends with a
justification for fresh parliamentary elections needed for completing it,”
writes the paper. “In between them there are only general slogans regarding
everyone’s equality before the law, eradication of corruption, creation of
necessary conditions for people’s dignified lives and other nice wishes.”
“If pre-term parliamentary elections are held then a party called the HHK will
not be elected to the [new] parliament,” editorializes “Aravot.” “One should
therefore not make efforts to fight against a non-existent party.” The paper
says Armenia’s previous ruling parties collapsed shortly after losing power and
the same fate awaits the HHK. “So the danger lies not in an HHK comeback … The
danger is scarier. The political force that takes over the government after the
elections, be it [Pashinian’s] Civil Contract or [Tsarukian’s] BHK, must not
become a new HHK in terms of its behavior and methods. At the moment there are
virtually no such indications. But … there were also no such indications in
1990-1991.”
(Tigran Avetisian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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