City Party Chief Replaced After Armenia Protest
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MOSCOW — The Communist Party leader of Yerevan, capital of Soviet Armenia, has been removed, the government newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday, the day after a giant protest rally was held in that Armenian city.
The newspaper said Levon Saakyan, party chief since December, 1985, was replaced by Mikhail Minasbekyan, a member of the Armenian party’s Central Committee.
Saakyan is to become first deputy premier of Armenia in what appears to be a lateral move.
Yerevan has faced nearly daily demonstrations and strikes in support of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian Christian enclave seeking to secede from the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan, which is predominately Turkish and Muslim.
Rem Ananikyan, deputy chief of the Armenian republic’s official news agency Armenpress, said by telephone from Yerevan that more than 200,000 people rallied Wednesday night to press the demands of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The protest came one day after Azerbaijan’s government rejected the decision by Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia.
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