
-
Alcaraz beats Cilic then takes on NBA's Butler
-
Canada down Finland to set up USA ice hockey grudge clash
-
Shakira resumes world tour after Lima hospital stay
-
Mexico says to sue Google if it insists on using 'Gulf of America'
-
Top Russia, US officials to meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday
-
Djokovic calls for overhaul of 'unfair' anti-doping system
-
Rio swelters in heatwave in run-up to Carnival
-
Israel says committed to Trump plan for Gaza displacement
-
Argentine prosecutors to probe Milei over 'cryptogate'
-
Turkey seals hotel spa illegally set up inside ancient cistern
-
Revamped Finnish museum says 'Good Bye, Lenin!'
-
Bayern hopeful Kane fit for Celtic clash
-
European leaders meet on response to US Ukraine shift
-
Muhsin Hendricks: S.Africa's gay imam who broke the mould
-
Italy probing Amazon over 1.2b euros in third-party seller VAT
-
Russell, Graham in Scotland squad to face England in Six Nations
-
Israeli military set to miss Lebanon withdrawal deadline despite pushback
-
France cuts prison activities to smooth facial massage outcry
-
Kenya's HIV patients victims of US aid freeze
-
Starmer to meet Trump 'next week': UK govt
-
US tensions add fire to final stretch of German election campaign
-
Italy's Milan upstages Pogacar in UAE Tour first stage
-
Pope's condition 'complex', hospital stay extended: Vatican
-
Liverpool can cope with title nerves: Van Dijk
-
Greece to open museum of ancient undersea treasures
-
European markets rise ahead of Ukraine war talks
-
'Now or never' for pandemic accord, says WHO chief after US pulls out
-
New Zealand's Williamson makes joint move to Middlesex and London Spirit
-
Hollywood should resist Trump pressure, says director Todd Haynes
-
Ukraine war death toll: huge but not fully known
-
Ex-Tour de France winner Thomas to retire at end of season
-
African players in Europe: Marmoush wreaks havoc in 14 minutes
-
Sri Lanka budget banks on car taxes to boost coffers
-
Musk's DOGE seeks access to US tax system: reports
-
Champions Trophy set for liftoff after India-Pakistan row, boycott calls
-
US tensions plague final phase of German election campaign
-
Rodgers urges Celtic to be bold against Bayern
-
Chatbot vs national security? Why DeepSeek is raising concerns
-
Court finds Singapore opposition leader guilty of lying to parliament
-
Rights groups slam Australian plan to transfer criminals to Nauru
-
End of the road for Kolkata's beloved yellow taxis
-
S. Korea says DeepSeek removed from local app stores pending privacy review
-
Navalny's widow seeks to rally divided Russian opposition
-
Taiwan bounty hunters kill invading iguanas as numbers soar
-
Japan 2024 growth slows despite stronger fourth quarter
-
Most Asian markets start week on positive note
-
LeBron James says won't play in All-Star game
-
General Atomics and EDGE Establish Partnership to Manufacture, Test and Repair Electromechanical Systems
-
Sweden's Aberg wins at Torrey Pines with final hole drama
-
Guardiola says Man City have 'one per cent' chance at Real Madrid

Armenia opposition demands PM resign over Karabakh
Opposition parties in Armenia on Monday staged protests to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's resign over his policy on the long-contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Arch-foe Caucasus neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a dispute since the 1990s over the mountainous enclave in Azerbaijan predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians.
Karabakh was at the centre of a six-week war in 2020 that claimed more than 6,500 lives before it ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Opposition parties now accuse 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".
Waving Armenian and Karabakh flags and shouting demands for Pashinyan to step down, some 5,000 protesters marched on Monday evening in central Yerevan.
"We are launching a popular protest movement to force Pashinyan to resign," parliament vice speaker and opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelyan told AFP ahead of the rally.
"He is a traitor, he has lied to the people," he said, accusing the 46-year-old leader of wanting to hand over the contested region to Azerbaijan. "He has no popular mandate to do so."
Saghatelyan said "protests will not stop until Pashinyan goes."
- 'Depressed mood' -
One of the demonstrators, 53-year-old dentist Hripsime Mkrtchyan, said: "Nikol must resign. His poor policy has led to territorial and human losses."
"Our people have never been in such a depressed mood. We don't see a light at the end of the tunnel."
Earlier in the morning, public transport was disrupted in Yerevan as small groups of protesters attempted to block traffic in the city centre.
Police intervened, briefly detaining dozens of protesters.
The Union of Journalists, a media advocacy group, criticised police tactics as heavy-handed, saying there were several instances of officers punching journalists covering the protests.
On Sunday, several thousand protesters rallied in central Yerevan to demand Pashinyan's resignation.
Under the Moscow-brokered deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the truce.
The pact was seen in Armenia as a national humiliation and sparked weeks of anti-government protests, leading Pashinyan to call snap parliamentary polls which his party, Civil Contract, won last September.
- Peace talks -
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.
M.Carneiro--PC