“Zhamanak” speculates that the signing of a new agreement between Armenia and the European Union is not a forgone conclusion even after it was finalized during President Serzh Sarkisian’s visit to Brussels on Monday. The paper says Sarkisian may have travelled to the EU headquarters in a bid to collect “European capital” that will be used by his HHK party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
“Zhoghovurd” says the successful conclusion of Armenia-EU talks on the new deal is a “quite important event for Armenia.” “Our country’s dependence on Russia has deepened so much that even the signing of a declarative document with the EU can be considered an achievement,” writes the paper. It describes as “noteworthy” the fact that this development comes in the run-up to the Armenian elections and completes a “very important geopolitical cycle from which Armenia has managed to emerge with minimal losses.”
Speaking to “168 Zham,” a London-based analyst, Lilit Gevorgian, predicts that Azerbaijan will soon carry out another “large-scale but brief offensive” in Nagorno-Karabakh soon. “Azerbaijan’s supreme objective now is to occupy a lot more territory,” she claims.
“Hayots Ashkhar” says that the failure of Saturday’s Azerbaijani commando raid in Karabakh spread panic in the Azerbaijani army ranks. “Once again, contradictory rumors began circulating in Azerbaijan,” writes the paper. “There was so much chaos that [the authorities] in Azerbaijan did not know how to present the incident to the public.”
“Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” quotes Mihran Poghosian, a controversial former senior government official running for the parliament on the HHK ticket, as saying that media reports that accused him of having secret offshore assets were part of a smear campaign that forced him to resign last year as head of Armenia’s Service for the Mandatory Execution of Judicial Acts (SMEJA). Poghosian also told an Armenian TV channel last week that law-enforcement authorities have cleared him of wrongdoing. The pro-opposition paper laughs off Poghosian’s claims.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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