Pashinyan claims unprecedented safety of Amulsar mine

After his meeting with opponents of the Amulsar mine, the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said that the operation thereof would be unprecedented in compliance with environmental standards. In the ongoing protests, he saw the interest of the Armenia mining companies, who don't want to meet the standards.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 14, the Investigating Committee (IC) of Armenia published the conclusion of an international expert group, according to which the environmental risks during the operation of the Amulsar mine are minimal. On August 15, activists stated that the IC had presented wrong results of the ecological examination. They demanded a personal meeting with Nikol Pashinyan to present him with their research results.

The operation of the Amulsar gold field will become unprecedented in the observance of environmental standards of Armenia, the Armenian Premier, Nikol Pashinyan, stated on August 19 in his video appeal posted in the Facebook social network, which was translated by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to his version, such standards, which allow revealing low quality of environmental safety in mines, have not yet been applied in the country.

"This will allow the government to demand from such mines to raise the bar. To do this, they will have to invest millions of US dollars," Mr Pashinyan believes.

He thinks that, given these circumstances, a number of companies prefer to sponsor protests against gold mining in Amulsar.

"These facts have been confirmed by operative services. They support protests in order to save tens of millions of US dollars," the Premier has explained.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 20, 2019 at 03:40 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.