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Assassination Attempt In Armenia Threatens Stability

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  • Assassination Attempt In Armenia Threatens Stability

    ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT IN ARMENIA THREATENS STABILITY

    http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCABRE9100H020130201?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandCha nnel=0
    Fri Feb 1, 2013 6:08am EST

    By Hasmik Lazarian

    YEREVAN (Reuters) - An assassination attempt on a presidential
    candidate in Armenia has thrown this month's election into doubt and
    could threaten stability in the volatile Caucasus region that carries
    oil and natural gas to Europe.

    Paruyr Hayrikyan, an outsider in the February 18 presidential vote,
    was shot in the shoulder close to his home in the capital Yerevan on
    Thursday night. Doctors removed the bullet on Friday and said his life
    was not in danger.

    The motive was not immediately clear but the election, in which
    President Serzh Sarksyan is widely expected to secure a second
    five-year term, could be postponed for two weeks under the
    constitution if he is forced to pull out.

    "It's a blow to the leadership of the country and our statehood,"
    Prime Minister Tigran Sarksyan told reporters.

    Stability is vital for the former Soviet republic of 3.2 million to
    woo investors and boost an economy devastated by a war with
    neighboring Azerbaijan in the 1990s and then the 2008-09 global
    financial crisis.

    The attack will raise fears of a return to the violence that marred
    the 2008 presidential election in the landlocked country, Russia's
    main ally in the turbulent south Caucasus.

    Violent clashes broke out between opposition protesters and police in
    2008, killing about 10 people and further damaging Armenia's hopes of
    recovery.

    "I don't think that this shot was against Mr Hayrikyan," said
    independent political analyst.

    "This shot was aimed against the political development of the country
    and was meant destabilize situation and mar the election."

    Any sign of instability in the Caucasus is a concern to investors
    because although Armenia has no pipelines of its own, pipelines carry
    oil and gas to Europe via Turkey through Azerbaijan, whose
    relationship with Armenia remains fractious.

    Russia has a military base in Armenia, which is a member of a
    Moscow-dominated security alliance of ex-Soviet states.

    Investors are already worried that violence could break out again over
    Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan that is
    controlled by ethnic Armenians. A war in the enclave in the early
    1990s killed about 30,000 people.

    Relations with another neighbor, Turkey, are also fraught because
    Ankara does not recognize as genocide the killing of Armenians in
    Ottoman Turkey during World War One.

    Hayrikyan, 63, is a Soviet-era dissident, who survived Soviet prison
    and internal exile as well as forced deportation from the Soviet Union
    to Ethiopia and the United States.

    He is now the leader of a moderate opposition party, the National
    Selfdetermination Union and ran for president in 2003.

    Analysts were puzzled about the motive for the attack.

    "I see the shooting as both a surprise and not necessarily politically
    motivated ... It may be the act of a frustrated, disgruntled lone
    individual," said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies
    Centre think tank.

    "And the key question - who gains from this act - remains unclear...

    But it may also reveal the level of discontent lingering just below
    the surface."

    Armenia was isolated and in chaos after the collapse of the Soviet
    Union in 1991, and things got so bad in the 1990s that people cut down
    all the trees in Yerevan to use as firewood.

    Matters have improved since then but the 2008-09 global economic
    crisis set back the recovery and the average nominal monthly salary is
    still under $300.

    (Additional reporting and writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by
    Timothy Heritage and Louise Ireland)

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