“Zhamanak” reports that President Serzh Sarkisian raised “a number of concrete issues important to Armenia” at Wednesday’s summit in Sochi of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The paper finds “interesting” the fact that this happened shortly after the Armenian parliament debated opposition calls for the country’s exit from the Russian-led trade bloc. It wonders whether Sarkisian used the opposition Yelk’s initiative to “get more aggressive vis-à-vis other EEU members” or on the contrary to “demonstrate that he is in full control of the situation and able to manage developments.”
An Iranian analyst, Kayhan Barzegar, tells “168 Zham” that Prime Minister Karen Karapetian did not discuss new issues with Iranian leaders during his official visit to Tehran this week. He says that “the most serious” Armenian-Iranian projects remain the planned expansion of an electricity-for-gas swap arrangement, the creation of a free economic zone on Armenia’s border with Iran and the increase in cargo traffic between the two countries. “After the lifting of sanctions [against Iran] the political and economic agenda of Armenian-Iranian relations has expanded,” he says. “But even this does not correspond to the full potential of those relations because Iran has not gotten rid of the sanctions for good. What is more, the new U.S. president is threatening Iran with new sanctions.”
“Zhoghovurd” condemns the “thuggish” behavior of members of the ruling Republican Party (HHK) who continued to insult their opposition colleagues during Wednesday’s session of Yerevan’s municipal council. “Civilized debate is not something that suits the Republicans,” writes the paper. “They are more familiar with insults and swear words simply because the Republicans do not understand a different language.”
“Offensive statements made during the debate are unacceptable to me,” Vahram Baghdasarian, the leader of the HHK faction in the Armenian parliament, is quoted by “Haykakan Zhamanak” as saying. The paper is unimpressed by this reaction to what happened in the Yerevan assembly. It says Baghdasarian also complained on Wednesday that media outlets ignore controversial statements made by opposition politicians and activists.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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