{"id":2549,"date":"2020-12-16T16:19:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T16:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139968"},"modified":"2020-12-16T16:19:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T16:19:41","slug":"armenias-pashinian-says-early-elections-cannot-be-held-based-on-my-will-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/16\/armenias-pashinian-says-early-elections-cannot-be-held-based-on-my-will-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenia’s Pashinian Says Early Elections ‘Cannot Be Held Based On My Will Alone’"},"content":{"rendered":"
YEREVAN — Armenia’s embattled prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, who is facing mounting opposition calls for him to step down over last month’s cease-fire deal with Azerbaijan, says he alone cannot decide to call early parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n
“The question is not whether or not the prime minister must resign,” Pashinian said in an interview with RFE\/RL on December 16. “The question is who decides in Armenia who should be the prime minister. The people must decide.”<\/p>\n
“Snap elections cannot be held based on my will and decision alone. There has to be consensus,” he added.<\/p>\n
The prime minister did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
Pashinian, who swept to power amid nationwide protests in 2018, has come under fire since agreeing to a Moscow-brokered deal with Azerbaijan that took effect on November 10, ending six weeks of fierce fighting in and around the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/p>\n
His opponents want him to quit over what they say was his disastrous handling of the conflict that handed Azerbaijan swaths of territory ethnic Armenians had controlled since the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the region’s population reject Azerbaijani rule.<\/p>\n
They had been governing their own affairs, with support from Armenia, since Azerbaijan’s troops and Azeri civilians were pushed out of the region and seven adjacent districts in a war that ended in a cease-fire in 1994.<\/p>\n