Armenian vote unique challenge for Moscow

Press, 17 June 1988, Page 6

Armenian vote unique challenge for Moscow

NZPA-Reuter Moscow A vote by Armenia’s Parliament in defiance of the Kremlin has presented the Soviet authorities with a unique challenge.

At a time when ethnic passions are running high along the southern Soviet fringes, the Armenian Supreme Soviet voted on Wednesday in favour of bringing the rebel Azerbaijani region of NagornoKarabakh into the Armenian fold. Despite the Kremlin’s previous refusal to redraw the internal borders, the Armenian Parliament appealed to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, grouping representatives of all 15 Soviet republics, to back its decision.

“Now the Supreme Soviet of this country cannot avoid discussing the matter,” one Soviet intellectual remarked after watching the main evening television news report on the political events in the Armenian capital,

Yerevan. Nagorno-Karabakh is a small, mountainous enclave in the western corner of Azerbaijan with little economic importance to the republic, but the issue of its possible transfer to neighbouring Armenia has fired four months of ethnic turmoil. The region’s inhabitants — 75 per cent Armenian, mostly Christian — are surrounded by a sea of Muslim Azerbaijanis who, by the Kremlin’s own admission, have seriously neglected Nagorno-Kara-bakh’s economic and cul-, tural needs since 1923.

The dispute has produced the biggest known non-official demonstrations in recent Soviet history. Up to one million people took to the streets of Yerevan in February to

support an appeal of Na-gorno-Karabakh’s governing council to join Armenia. There has also been bloodshed. At least 32 people were killed , in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait in anti-Armenian riots in February. A policemen was shot dead last weekend in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, in a new wave of tension. Azerbaijan’s new Communist Party leader, Abdul Vezirov, responded to the latest outbreak of local opposition to ceding Nagorno-Karabakh by announcing that the Presidium of the republic’s Supreme Soviet had voted against any border changes. Mr Vezirov made the announcement on Monday on his return Moscow, raising the question

of whether the Kremlin authorities had given him their blessing. It was not immediately known if the Armenian Communist Party leader, Suren Arutunyan, like Mr Vezirov in office for less than a month, had also visited the Kremlin ahead of his Parliament’s vote. If so, it would suggest the authorities had agreed to let the two republics take diametrically opposite stands. If not, it would indicate the Kremlin was allowing the dispute to run its course, perhaps until after a party conference opening on June 28. The conference is due to enact sweeping political reforms which, among other things, would increase the powers of the Soviet Parliament to take action independent of the party.