YEREVAN: Thousands of opposition supporters rallied Sunday in the Armenian capital Yerevan to warn the government against concessions to arch-foe Azerbaijan over the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of plans to give away all of Karabakh to Azerbaijan after he told lawmakers last month that the “international community calls on Armenia to scale down demands on Karabakh.”
On Sunday, several thousand opposition supporters gathered in the capital’s central Square of France, blocking traffic throughout central Yerevan.
Protesters shouted demands for Pashinyan to resign, with many holding placards that read “Karabakh.”
Parliament Vice Speaker and opposition leader Ishkhan Sagatelyan said: “Any political status of Karabakh within Azerbaijan is unacceptable to us.”
“Pashinyan had betrayed people’s trust and must go,” he told journalists at the rally, adding that the protest movement “will lead to the overthrow of the government in the nearest future.”
Addressing the crowd, he announced “a large scale campaign of civil disobedience to begin on Monday.”
“I call on everyone to begin strikes. I call on students not to attend classes. Traffic will be fully blocked in central Yerevan.”
On Saturday, Armenia’s National Security Service warned of “a real threat of mass unrest in the country.”
Yerevan and Baku had been locked in a territorial dispute since the 1990s over the mountainous region of Azerbaijan predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians.
Karabakh was at the center of a six-week war in 2020 that claimed more than 6,500 lives before it ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire agreement.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territories it had controlled for decades and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the truce.
In April, Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met for rare EU-mediated talks in Brussels after which they tasked their foreign ministers to “begin preparatory work for peace talks.”
The meeting came after a flare-up in Karabakh on March 25 that saw Azerbaijan capture a strategic village in the area under the Russian peacekeepers’ responsibility, killing three separatist troops.
Baku tabled in mid-March its set of framework proposals for the peace agreement that includes both sides’ mutual recognition of territorial integrity, meaning Yerevan should agree on Karabakh being part of Azerbaijan.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan sparked controversy at home when he said — commenting on the Azerbaijani proposal — that for Yerevan “the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not a territorial issue, but a matter of rights” of the local ethnic-Armenian population.
Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflicts claimed around 30,000 lives.
Thousands rally in Armenia against Karabakh concessions
https://arab.news/bcn3a
Thousands rally in Armenia against Karabakh concessions
- Opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of plans to give away all of Karabakh to Azerbaijan
- Yerevan and Baku had been locked in a territorial dispute since the 1990s over the mountainous region of Azerbaijan predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians
US hotels seek World Cup boost after tourism dip under Trump
- At the US hotels that Meade Atkeson manages, a drop in tourism weighs heavily on business — but hoteliers like him hope that World Cup enthusiasm will soon eclipse wariness over President
WASHINGTON: At the US hotels that Meade Atkeson manages, a drop in tourism weighs heavily on business — but hoteliers like him hope that World Cup enthusiasm will soon eclipse wariness over President Donald Trump’s policies.
The US hospitality sector has been reeling from a tourism slump in the world’s biggest economy, which became the only major destination to see a drop in foreign visitors last year.
“Just financially, it’s difficult when international travel is down,” Atkeson told AFP, noting that such visitors tend to stay longer and spend more.
Foreign travelers account for nearly a quarter of business at the three hotels under Sonesta group that he manages — two in Washington and a third in Miami Beach.
Yet, in the first eleven months of 2025, US official data showed that inbound travel dropped by 5.4 percent.
Canadians were noticeably absent, with travel plunging by 21.7 percent from 2024, translating to about four million fewer people. The decline was nearly seven percent for French visitors.
Industry professionals see this as a consequence of Trump’s policies, even if they may not openly say so.
Visitors have chafed at the Republican president’s sweeping tariffs on foreign goods, broadsides against other countries, tightening immigration rules and portrayal of certain Democrat-led cities as ridden with crime.
Canadians “were asked to be the 51st state, right?” Atkeson said.
“If you talk to Canadians, many of them have chosen not to travel out of conscience” or on principle, he added.
Brazilian tourists meanwhile “can go anywhere they want,” he said. “And so they may have gone to Europe, they may have gone to the islands.”
‘Fear’
Thousands of kilometers away, the major resort city of Las Vegas in Nevada — boasting 150,000 hotel rooms — has also had a bad year.
Elsa Rodan, a chambermaid at the Bellagio resort and casino, says her establishment is “blessed” compared with others.
But even so, it has had to lower prices to attract guests, added Rodan, a representative of the Unite Here union who spoke at a Washington press conference.
Unite Here President Gwen Mills urges for a renewed effort to lobby the Trump administration over policies and rhetoric that she believes are jeopardizing the sector employing more than two million people.
According to her, hoteliers are not pushing the government enough.
Employers express “fear, the fear of picking your head up,” she said.
Hopefully ‘better’
Fewer visitors and overnight stays, alongside a drop in revenue, have triggered a $6.7 billion shortfall for Nevada hotels in 2025, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA).
But the organization hopes that 2026 will be a turning point — it is counting on the World Cup, from June 11 to July 19, to attract visitors.
Eleven US cities will be hosting matches.
“It’s being equated to having nearly 80 Super Bowls in just over a month,” AHLA spokesman Ralph Posner told AFP.
“The economic lift won’t be limited to host cities,” he added. “Destinations across the country are hoping to benefit as international visitors extend their trips and travel between markets.”
Las Vegas, for example, hopes to draw fans who might stop there before or after a game in Los Angeles or Kansas City.
Organizers say that besides the seven million spectators in stadiums, the World Cup is set to attract 20-30 million tourists.
The whole event, they believe, can generate $30 billion for the US economy.
“I hope that things will look better,” Atkeson said.
His Miami hotel is under renovations and cannot host much World Cup-related activity.
But his Washington establishments are highlighting their proximity to Philadelphia, where several matches will be held.
Another complication is war in the Middle East following US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which could snarl travel.
“It’s a little too soon to tell how we’re going to do with that, but we’ll see,” he said.
