Armenia: Under fire PM Pashinyan refuses to resign

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is under fire, said on Wednesday that he would step down immediately if it would help Armenia’s issues, but he thought it would make matters worse. The pressure on Pashinyan has increased since neighbouring Azerbaijan took control of the Armenian-populated territory of Nagorno-Karabakh last month, as evidenced by his remark to an opposition member of parliament. Since then, the majority of Karabakh’s population—more than 100,000 people—has fled and sought safety in Armenia, a nation with a population of only 2.8 million. Since taking office in 2018, Pashinyan claimed that Armenia had always experienced difficulties. “I’ll say it straight: If I know that, for example, by my resignation or removal all these challenges will be resolved, I’ll do it the very next second because, unlike you, I do not cling and have never clung to my chair,” the state news agency Armenpress quoted him as saying. “But all my analysis shows that this will lead to exactly the opposite result. And this is also the reason why it isn’t happening.” The destiny of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the majority of Armenians view as a national tragedy that has forced them to leave ancestral territories, has prompted protesters to call for Pashinyan to resign. Despite the fact that the ethnic Armenian majority in the region had enjoyed de facto independence since seceding in a war in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, the territory is accepted internationally as belonging to Azerbaijan. According to Azerbaijani state media, Pashinyan previously declared he would attend Thursday’s negotiations in Spain that were being mediated by the European Union despite Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan pulling out. In the past 30 years, the two neighbours have engaged in two wars over Karabakh, and despite efforts by the EU, the US, and Russia, they have not yet agreed to sign a peace deal. (With agency inputs)