Syunik Mayors Refuse to Meet with Tigran Avinyan Visiting the Region

The Mayor of Kapan, Gevorg Parsyan, has declined to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan. The information was revealed in a conversation with "Factinfo," where the mayor added that a meeting regarding the problems in Syunik was supposed to take place, but he has no expectations.

Gevorg Parsyan noted that the Deputy Prime Minister's visit, the purpose of the meeting, and the mayors' refusal to meet could be exploited in the future, but he emphasized that the issues in Syunik have been raised multiple times, including in writing. "If tomorrow or the day after, government representatives try to exploit the fact that the working group came to Syunik without meeting with the community leaders and failed to raise the issues, claiming that they are unaware of the problems, know that this does not correspond to reality, as we have already submitted our issues in writing. They have a general understanding of them," he stated.

Parsyan added that there are many problems concerning Kapan, some of which citizens are unaware of and may never know. One of the issues is the safety of roads. Several sections of the road remain unmonitored. "Along the entire border, we have numerous open areas where the entry and exit of Azerbaijanis is possible. However, I do not believe that Azerbaijanis can pass through our border guard checkpoints, but there are other routes that can be used. For instance, the Tathev road. There are no law enforcement officers there to conduct monitoring, but we also have many problematic sections along the border line," said the community leader.

Commenting on the government's official response that demarcations are security-related and cannot be interpreted as a final agreement on border demarcation, Parsyan mentioned that he also hopes that these are not final but relies on the next authorities. "I believe this is not final. The final solution will come as a result of delimitation and demarcation. For these processes between the two countries to occur, diplomatic relations must exist, and those relations are not present between our countries, nor do I think they will exist for a long time. I hope that following the change of this incompetent government, we will have an even better administration capable of securing positive solutions for our region as an authoritative negotiating party," he added.

Parsyan does not rule out that new decisions may be made that would again inflict damage on Syunik. "In reality, that worries me. There could be new agreements or decisions made secretly from the public that could be harmful to us," he noted. He added that he cannot specifically say what decisions might be made, as the issue is that they simply remain unaware of the decisions — there has been precedent for that. "We surrendered the safety zone that secured us, as well as the favorable heights we occupied before the signing of the November 9 agreement, but ultimately, there was a decision that we had to retreat. I am convinced that that decision had already been made a long time ago, and we learned about it only at the last minute," concluded Parsyan.