Friday, December 3, 2021
Pashinian’s Party Defends Reliance On Ex-Allies Of Former Regime
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - The ruling Republican Party of Armenia holds a congress in Yerevan,
26Nov2016.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party on Friday defended the abundance of
former political allies of Armenia’s previous leadership among its candidates
running in upcoming local elections.
Voters in 36 communities across the country will go to the polls on Sunday to
elect, on a party-list basis, their new mayors and local councils. Most of those
communities were recently enlarged.
The ruling Civil Contract party has fielded or endorsed candidates in all of
those communities. In several of them, its lists of candidates are topped by
former members of former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK).
They include Sargis Muradian, the incumbent mayor of Sevan, a town 55 kilometers
north of Yerevan. In another community encompassing the resort town of Jermuk,
the ruling party’s mayoral candidate is a son of Ashot Arsenian, a wealthy
businessman who has long had close ties with Sarkisian.
A larger number of HHK defectors are running for local councils on the Civil
Contract ticket in these and other municipalities.
The strong presence of such individuals on the ruling party’s electoral slates
has raised eyebrows in Armenia. Critics say that it is at odds with Pashinian’s
regular characterizations of the country’s former rulers as corrupt individuals
who did not care about ordinary people and their problems.
The prime minister came to power in 2018 on the back of mass protests sparked by
Sarkisian’s attempt to prolong his decade-long rule.
ARMENIA -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian gives a speech during a
campaign rally in central Yerevan, June 17, 2021
Vahagn Aleksanian, a pro-government lawmaker who was until recently Civil
Contract’s spokesman, insisted that there is nothing wrong with the large number
of the former regime’s loyalists among the Pashinian-led party’s election
candidates.
Aleksanian, who himself used to be affiliated with another party, said that many
of these individuals claimed to have been forced to join the former ruling HHK
and were therefore “given a chance” to “transform” themselves by the current
government. He refused to name any of them.
Gegham Manukian, a senior member of the opposition Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), ridiculed Pashinian’s reliance on the defectors.
“The Armenian public must be aware that the former rulers are on the electoral
offensive,” Manukian said tartly. “But the former rulers are now acting on the
ticket of Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract.”
Dashnaktsutyun is part of the main opposition Hayastan alliance led by former
President Robert Kocharian. It has fielded candidates in 20 of the 36
communities. Other opposition parties are participating in fewer local races.
Pashinian’s party suffered several serious setbacks in local elections held
elsewhere in Armenia in October and November. It was effectively defeated in the
country’s second largest city of Gyumri and also failed to install its members
as mayors of the three main communities of Syunik province.
Moscow Hits Back At Armenian Speaker
• Aza Babayan
RUSSIA -- A view of the Russian Foreign Ministry building in Moscow, May 5, 2016
The Russian Foreign Ministry slammed Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian
on Friday for his reported claim that Russia sought to restore Azerbaijani
control over Nagorno-Karabakh through peace proposals made before last year’s
war.
Simonian was quoted as making the claim in a recent interview with several
Russian journalists. He responded to one of those journalists who accused the
Armenian government of “surrendering” Karabakh to Azerbaijan with the aim of
ending Armenia’s alliance with Russia.
“For its part, the Armenian society is … of the opinion that Russia surrendered
Karabakh,” Simonian said in comments publicized by Russian media last week. “In
anybody [in Armenia] wanted to surrender anything, there were several variants
of doing that, including the Lavrov plan.”
The Armenian speaker, who is a key political ally of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian, referred to a peace plan that was drafted by U.S., Russian and French
mediators and reportedly promoted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The plan was based on the so-called Madrid Principles of a Karabakh settlement,
which were first put forward by the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group in
2007.
Armenia - Newly elected speaker Alen Simonian chairs a session of the National
Assembly, Yerevan, August 3, 2021.
A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry scoffed at the claim attributed
to Simonian.
“It is difficult to comment on something that exists not in reality but in the
imagination,” the unnamed official told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
"It is deeply regrettable that some Armenian politicians not only do not refute
absurd ‘thoughts’ about Russia's ‘surrender’ of Nagorno-Karabakh, which does not
belong to, but, in fact, agree with such baseless judgments,” said the official.
The official argued that the peace plan stipulated that Karabakh’s
internationally recognized status would be determined through a future
referendum and envisaged firm security guarantees for the territory’s
predominantly Armenian population.
“Once again compare those proposals of the co-chairs with the current situation
and draw conclusions,” the Russian official added, clearly alluding to sweeping
Armenian territorial losses suffered as a result of the six-week war with
Azerbaijan stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November 2020.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) meets with OSCE Minsk Group
Co-Chairs, Yerevan,15Oct2019.
A spokesman for the Armenian parliament refused to comment on the criticism.
Pashinian likewise repeatedly criticized the mediators’ peace proposals during
and after the disastrous war. In a January 2021 article, he claimed that their
most recent version amounted to a proposed “surrender of lands” to Azerbaijan
“in return for nothing.”
The then Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group, Igor Popov, bluntly denied that in
written comments posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. Popov said
Yerevan and Baku intensively negotiated on the proposed peace formula until
Pashinian’s government “came up with new approaches” in 2018.
Another Karabakh Armenian Civilian Killed
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Azerbaijani soldiers patrol at a checkpoint on a road
outside the town of Shushi (Susa), November 26, 2020
Azerbaijani forces shot and killed another ethnic Armenian resident of
Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday.
Karabakh’s National Security Service (NSS) said the 65-year-old Seyran Sargsian
was captured in the no-man’s-land outside the town of Chartar before being
murdered at a nearby Azerbaijani army post.
An NSS statement said the “criminal actions” of Azerbaijani troops were caught
on camera from the Armenian side of the current “line of contact” in and around
Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed, meanwhile, that an “individual of
Armenian origin” attacked an Azerbaijani soldier in an attempt to steal his
weapon. It said the soldier acted in self-defense and shot the man.
The authorities in Stepanakert dismissed the claim, saying that the Azerbaijani
military is trying to justify its “barbaric terrorist act.”
Armenia also strongly condemned the “deliberate” killing. The Armenian Foreign
Ministry spokesman, Vahan Hunanian, said Azerbaijani attacks on Karabakh
civilians are becoming “systematic” and show that “it is impossible to guarantee
the physical security of Artsakh’s Armenians under Azerbaijani control or
jurisdiction.”
Both sides said they notified Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Karabakh
about the incident.
Sargsian is the third Karabakh civilian shot dead by Azerbaijani forces in less
than two months.
The previous incident occurred on November 8 when four Karabakh Armenian utility
workers repaired a water pipe outside the Azerbaijani-controlled town of Shushi
(Shusha). One of them was gunned down while the three others wounded as a
result. Baku did not deny that the civilians were shot by an Azerbaijani
serviceman but blamed the Armenian side for the shooting condemned by the U.S.
State Department.
In recent months, Karabakh authorities have also periodically accused
Azerbaijani troops of opening small arms fire at Karabakh towns and villages
located close to the “line of contact.” They have said that Baku wants to
intimidate Karabakh Armenians and cause them to leave the disputed territory.
Canada Voices ‘Solidarity’ With Armenia
Sweden - Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly speaks with her Armenian
counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan during an OSCE ministerial meeting in Stockholm,
December 2, 2021.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly expressed her country’s solidarity with
Armenia when she discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with her Armenian
counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan on Thursday.
The two ministers spoke with each other during an annual meeting of the top
diplomats of OSCE member states held in Sweden’s capital Stockholm.
“I expressed Canada’s solidarity with Armenian people, reiterated Canada is
deeply concerned by the recent Armenia-Azerbaijan border clash, which resulted
in the deaths of Armenian troops,” Joly tweeted after the conversation.
“Our thoughts are with the victims’ families, loved ones and the community,” she
said. “We call for de-escalation so that a peaceful solution to the conflict may
be found.”
The fighting cited by Joly broke out on November 16 at one of the contested
sections of the border where Azerbaijani and Armenian forces have been locked in
a standoff since May. It left at least 13 soldiers from both sides dead.
Yerevan accused Azerbaijani troops of trying to advance deeper into Armenian
territory. Baku denied that and blamed the Armenian side for what was one of the
worst armed incidents since a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped last year’s war
over Karabakh.
Nagorno-Karabakh -- An Armenian Defense Ministry photo that purportedly shows
fragments of a Turkish-manufactured combat drone shot down in Nagorno-Karabakh,
October 22, 2020.
Just days after the outbreak of the war in September 2020, the Canadian
government suspended the export of drone technology to Turkey. It banned such
exports altogether in April this year after investigating and confirming reports
that Turkish-manufactured Bayraktar TB2 combat drones, heavily used by the
Azerbaijani army, are equipped with imaging and targeting systems made by a
Canada-based firm.
“This use was not consistent with Canadian foreign policy, nor end-use
assurances given by Turkey,” Joly’s predecessor, Marc Garneau, said at the time.
Ankara criticized the embargo and urged Ottawa to reconsider it.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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