YEREVAN —
Several thousand opposition supporters rallied Tuesday in the Armenian capital
Yerevan to denounce the government’s handling of a territorial dispute with
arch-foe
Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
اضافة اعلان
Long-contested
between the Caucasus neighbors, Karabakh was at the center of an all-out war in
2020 that claimed more than 6,500 lives before it ended with a Russian-brokered
ceasefire agreement.
The pact saw
Armenia cede swathes of territories it had controlled for decades in what was
seen in
Armenia as a national humiliation, sparking weeks of mass
anti-government protests.
Waving Armenian
and Karabakh flags, protesters filled the capital’s central Freedom Square on
Tuesday evening, with many shouting anti-government slogans.
They then marched
through downtown Yerevan, vowing to block traffic in the streets later in the
evening.
The rally was held
on the eve of a summit in Brussels between Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“The government is
ready to give away Karabakh to Azerbaijan,” Gegham Manukyan, a leader of
opposition Dashnaktsutyun party told AFP at the rally.
“We have gathered
here to draw red lines which no Armenian government must cross while dealing
with Azerbaijan,” he added.
“Many in Armenia
rule out an option of Karabakh being part of Azerbaijan.”
‘Fear of concessions’
One of the demonstrators, 58-year-old seamstress Marine Harutyunyan said:
“We don’t expect anything positive from tomorrow’s meeting” between Pashinyan
and Aliyev.
“We fear Pashinyan
could yield to the pressure and make concessions which will lead to the loss of
Karabakh and ultimately Armenia’s sovereignty,” she added.
During their talks
on Wednesday — mediated by the European Council President
Charles Michel —
Aliyev and Pashinyan are expected to discuss the start of negotiations on a
“comprehensive peace treaty.”
Their meeting
comes after a flare-up in Karabakh on March 25 that saw Azerbaijan capture a
strategic village in the area under the Russian peacekeepers’ responsibility,
killing three Armenian separatist troops.
Moscow and Yerevan
at the time accused Azerbaijan of a ceasefire violation, a charge Baku has
rejected, insisting its troops are in Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.
Yerevan also
called on Baku to start peace talks “without delay”. Baku agreed, saying it had
already put forward such a proposal a year ago.
Baku tabled in
mid-March its set of framework proposals for the peace agreement that includes
both sides’ mutual recognition of territorial integrity, meaning Yerevan should
agree on Karabakh being part of Azerbaijan.
Armenian Foreign
Minister
Ararat Mirzoyan sparked controversy at home when he said — commenting
on the Azerbaijani proposal — that for Yerevan “the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
is not a territorial issue, but a matter of rights” of the local
ethnic-Armenian population.
Ethnic Armenian
separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet
Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflicts claimed around 30,000 lives.
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