{"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":"
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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

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Under the peace deal, some parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by Armenians.<\/p>\n

Thousands of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets of Yerevan and other Armenian cities since the truce deal took effect, while most opposition groups called for the establishment of a new, interim government until early elections can be held in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Pashinian has said he has no plans to quit, insisting that he is responsible for ensuring national security and stabilizing the former Soviet republic.<\/p>\n

However, representatives of his My Step bloc have indicated in recent days that they are “ready to discuss” the possibility of holding fresh parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n

In the interview with RFE\/RL, the prime minister also admitted that he bore responsibility for the outcome of the latest fighting, in which more than 5,600 people on both sides were killed — the worst clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh since the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

“I consider myself the No. 1 person responsible [for the Armenian side’s defeat] but I don’t consider myself the No. 1 guilty person,” Pashinian said, dismissing critics’ claims he precipitated the war with a reckless policy on Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YEREVAN \u2014 Armenia\u2019s embattled prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, who is facing mounting opposition calls for him to step down over last month\u2019s cease-fire deal with Azerbaijan, says he\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28,4,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}