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Thousands Rally In Armenia To Warn Against Concessions Over Nagorno-Karabakh

Thousands of opposition supporters rallied on May 1 in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to warn the government against concessions to Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

Opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of plans to give away all of Karabakh to Azerbaijan after he told lawmakers last month that the “international community calls on Armenia to scale down demands on Karabakh.”

 

On May 1, several thousand opposition supporters gathered in the capital’s central Square of France, calling on Pashinian to resign. Many held placards that read “Karabakh.”

Ishkhan Sagatelian, parliament vice speaker and opposition leader, said: “Any political status of Karabakh within Azerbaijan is unacceptable to us.”

 

“Pashinian has betrayed people’s trust and must go,” he told journalists at the rally, adding that the protest movement “will lead to the overthrow of the government in the nearest future.”

 

Addressing the crowd, he announced that a large-scale campaign of civil disobedience will begin on May 2. He said opposition members will spend the night on the square.

 

“I call on everyone to begin strikes. I call on students not to attend classes. Traffic will be fully blocked in central Yerevan,” he said.

 

On April 30, Armenia’s National Security Service warned of “a real threat of mass unrest in the country.”

 

Last month, during talks in Brussels, Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to start drafting a bilateral peace treaty to resolve the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh and set up a joint commission on demarcating their common border.

 

Baku wants the peace deal to be based on five elements, including a mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity. Pashinian has publicly stated that the elements are acceptable to Yerevan in principle, fueling Armenian opposition claims that he is ready to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

Baku regained control of parts of the breakaway region in the 2020 war, as well as seven adjacent districts that had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since the end of a separatist war in 1994. Some 2,000 Russian troops have been deployed to monitor the current cease-fire.

 

Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been under ethnic Armenian control for nearly three decades, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

 

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