Armenian Opposition Requests Talks With Pashinian Amid Fighting Around Key Nagorno-Karabakh Town

YEREVAN — The leaders of the two opposition factions in the Armenian parliament have reiterated their demand for a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to discuss the ongoing fighting over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Prosperous Armenia’s Gagik Tsarukian and Edmon Marukian of Bright Armenia renewed their call on November 9 as Azerbaijan and the ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh gave different accounts of the battle for the region’s strategic town of Shushi (known as Susa in Azeri).

Tsarukian and Marukian issued a joint statement in which they reminded Pashinian about the request they made in late October for an urgent meeting of the country’s Security Council and opposition lawmakers.

They said Pashinian had given no official response to that request.

“Taking into account that fighting in Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh) continues, we once again appeal to the prime minister with a demand for an immediate meeting with the parliamentary opposition factions,” the statement reads.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on November 8 said his country’s forces had taken Shushi, the second-largest settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh — a claim that has not been confirmed by officials in Yerevan.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesperson Shushan Stepanian said that fighting near Shushi — a hilltop town located on a main road some 10 kilometers south of the region’s main city, Stepanakert, which it overlooks — continued in the morning of November 9.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto ethnic Armenian leader, Arayik Harutiunian, said in a Facebook post that he had inspected military positions defending Stepanakert and praised ethnic Armenian forces “who have, for more than a day, been resisting enemy bandits attacking the capital from Shushi.”

Meanwhile, Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto Defense Ministry said it had recorded another 44 casualties among its forces, pushing its military death toll to 1,221 since fighting with the Azerbaijani military erupted on September 27.

Azerbaijan has not released any military casualty figures.

Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the population reject Azerbaijani rule. They have been governing their own affairs, with support from Armenia, since Azerbaijan’s troops were pushed out of the region in a war that ended in a cease-fire in 1994.