The two main Armenian opposition forces demanded such a briefing immediately after Azerbaijani authorities began levying on September 12 hefty duties from Iranian vehicles passing through an Azerbaijani-controlled section of the main highway connecting Armenia and Iran.
They said Defense Minister Arshak Karapetian and National Security Service (NSS) Director Armen Abazian must come to the National Assembly to answer questions about the Azerbaijani roadblock and the overall situation along the country’s borders.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian said he will consider organizing such a discussion. Simonian has made no further statements on the matter since then. It therefore remains unclear whether the authorities will accept the opposition demand.
In a bid to step up the pressure on them, the opposition Hayastan and Pativ Unem blocs have drafted legislation requiring top security officials to appear before the parliament in such cases. They will try to push it through the parliament committee on defense and security first.
The committee is scheduled to hold on Friday an emergency meeting initiated by its four opposition members. The committee’s chairman and six other members representing the ruling Civil Contract party have not yet commented on the opposition bill.
“I hope that common sense will prevail and this initiative will not be blocked,” Pativ Unem’s Tigran Abrahamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday.
“The fact is that those officials who are supposed to be at least somewhat accountable to the public are dodging that in all possible ways,” he said.
Opposition leaders have repeatedly condemned Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government for handing over a 21-kilometer section of the Armenia-Iran highway to Azerbaijan shortly after last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinian said at the time that the road section is located on the Azerbaijani side of Armenia’s Soviet-era border with Azerbaijan, a claim disputed by his political opponents.
The Azerbaijani roadblock and its resulting negative impact on Iran’s cargo traffic with Armenia have fuelled unprecedented tensions between Tehran and Baku.
Senior Armenian and Iranian officials have discussed the issue in recent weeks. Yerevan has pledged to accelerate the ongoing reconstruction of an alternative road in Armenia’s Syunik province which will allow Iranian trucks to bypass the Azerbaijani checkpoint.