YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) – Armenia’s Prime Minister reached a political point on Tuesday in his spit with the top military buyer, promoting his proposal to fire the country’s top military officer.
A political crisis caused by Armenia’s defeat in the conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region escalated last week when the military general’s staff demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after his move for a top general. to resign. Pashinyan responded by the Chief of Staff, Col. Genl. Onik Gasparyan, to resign.
Armenia’s largely ceremonial president, Armen Sarkissian, on Tuesday refused to approve the dismissal order for the second time. However, the president refrained from asking the country’s Supreme Court to see if the order to dismiss Gasparyan was in accordance with the constitution, a legal proviso that means the dismissal will take effect automatically.
Pashinyan has faced opposition to resign since signing a peace deal in November that ended six weeks of intense fighting with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In the Russian mediation agreement, Azerbaijan regained control of large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas held by Armenian forces for more than a quarter of a century.
Opposition protests in search of Pashinyan’s expulsion waned during the winter, but escalated amid a rift between him and the country’s military leaders.
On Monday, thousands of Pashinyan supporters and opposition protesters gathered in separate locations in the Armenian capital and marched through the city. More events are planned for Wednesday.
Pashinyan, a 45-year-old former journalist who came to power after leading major street protests in 2018 that drove out his predecessor, still enjoys wide support despite the country’s defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh and the opposition is asking him to resign.
The prime minister defended the peace deal as a painful but necessary step to prevent Azerbaijan from dominating the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region, which lies in Azerbaijan, but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war ended there in 1994. The fighting with Azerbaijan, which broke out in late September and lasted 44 days, left more than 6,000 people dead. Russia has deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to monitor the November 10 peace agreement.