Assassination attempt in Armenia threatens stability

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 Alexander Iskanderyan, describing him as a symbol of independence.

"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)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/assassination-attempt-armenia-threatens-stability-110746064.html

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