Close Contest Expected in Armenian Election

MOSCOW - Armenia's political fate hangs in the balance ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday, with opinion polls putting the party of acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and that of former President Robert Kocharyan neck-and-neck.

The Armenian government called the snap election to try to end a political crisis that erupted after ethnic Armenian forces lost a bloody six-week war against Azerbaijan last year and ceded territory in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Pashinyan has been under pressure ever since, with regular street protests demanding he step down over the terms of the peace agreement that ended the conflict. Under the deal, which Russia brokered, Azerbaijan regained control of territory it had lost during a war in the early 1990s. Pashinyan himself called the agreement a disaster, but said he had been compelled to sign it in order to prevent greater human and territorial losses.