100,000 Protest in Yerevan, Stay Idle From Jobs

MOSCOW — More than 100,000 demonstrators gathered in the streets of the Armenian capital of Yerevan today while factories remained shut and tensions stayed high over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, official sources said.

In the disputed region itself, the governing council of Nagorno-Karabakh--a predominantly Armenian enclave in neighboring Azerbaijan--called a meeting for Tuesday to discuss the continuing tug-of-war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of the territory.

Armenian Communist Party leader Suren Arutunyan declared over the weekend on the republic’s airwaves that Kremlin leaders will convene soon to discuss the five-month-old crisis.

Series of Protests

This morning’s rally outside Yerevan’s Institute of Ancient Painting was the latest in a series of mass demonstrations supporting Armenian demands to transfer Nagorno-Karabakh out of Azerbaijani administration.

Tass press agency said most of Yerevan’s industrial enterprises resumed work today and tens of thousands of Yerevan’s 1.2 million residents went to their jobs.

But the government newspaper Izvestia indicated many people did little actual work once they arrived at their offices and factories.

At a rally in Yerevan on Sunday evening, attended by hundreds of thousands of people, speakers urged the people not to go to work until at least July 18, Izvestia said.

It said the speakers also used “very strong words” and criticized Armenian delegates to the June 28-July 1 Communist Party conference in Moscow for a “lack of resolution in defending national interests.”