“Zhamanak” reports that visiting Nagorno-Karabakh over the weekend, President Serzh Sarkisian said that Armenia will not hesitate to use its Iskander ballistic missiles if Azerbaijan attempts to achieve a military solution to the Karabakh conflict. The paper notes that Sarkisian voiced the threat ahead of the U.S., Russian and French mediators’ latest trip to Yerevan and Stepanakert. It suggests that Sarkisian may thus be trying to make clear that Armenia will not resume substantive peace talks unless Azerbaijan complies with confidence-building agreements reached by the two sides last year.
In an interview with “168 Zham,” a leading Russian defense analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, comments on Armenia’s participation in a NATO-led military exercise to be held in Georgia. Felgenhauer suggests that Yerevan discussed the sensitive issue with Moscow. “I don’t think that Yerevan does not know what Moscow’s reaction will be,” he says.
“168 Zham” claims that the Armenian authorities are now trying to hush up a scandal triggered by revelations that school and kindergarten directors across the country are illegally campaigning for the ruling HHK’s victory in the April 2 elections. Dozens of directors admitted drawing up lists of their staffers and children’s parents, who pledged to vote for the HHK, in phone conversations with members of the non-governmental Union of Informed Citizens (UIC) posting as HHK campaigners. State prosecutors have said that only one of those conversations might warrant a criminal investigation, while the Ministry of Education has vowed to look into the revelations. For its part, the Yerevan municipality is “already justifying the practice,” writes the paper.
“Laws have not quite reigned in Armenia for the last 25 years, but the rich are not really ashamed of their wealth,” writes “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun.” “Quite the opposite, they flaunt it and try to convince people on the street to vote for them. Look at the individual candidate lists of parties carefully. There is no lack of recognized or hidden millionaires there. And this is the case in a country where it is impossible to become rich by legal means.”
(Tigran Avetisian)
Facebook Forum