Armenian PM Triggers Early Election a Day after Biden's Genocide Announcement
Voice of America
MOSCOW - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was swept to power in pro-democracy protests in 2018, triggered an early election on Sunday to try overcome criticism over his handling of last year's conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
His resignation, which was expected, came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted genocide, a move welcomed by Armenians worldwide and condemned by Turkey. Pashinyan told Biden the symbolic decision was a matter of security to Armenia after the six week conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Turkey backed Armenia's neighbor Azerbaijan, where the ethnic Armenian-populated enclave is located. Pashinyan had been under pressure to resign since he agreed to a cease-fire after ethnic Armenians lost territory in the fighting with Azeri forces in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.