Ethnic Protests Erupt Again in Armenia, Soviets Confirm

Soviet officials confirmed Tuesday that demonstrations have been renewed in Armenia, apparently in protest over an article in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda indicating there will be no change in disputed borders in the region.

Officials contacted in Yerevan, capital of the Soviet republic of Armenia, said the demonstrations Monday and Tuesday were small compared with those last month. Those began when Armenians demanded that the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within the borders of the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan but is peopled largely by Armenians, be restored to Armenia.

Armenian activists had pledged to suspend demonstrations on the issue until after Saturday, when a plenary meeting in Moscow of the Communist Party Central Committee is scheduled to take up the nationalities question.

Dissident sources in Moscow said that about 7,000 people took part in a demonstration Monday night, gathering in front of the main press building in Yerevan to protest an article in Pravda suggesting that changing the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh would lead to social and economic disruption and open the door to similar demands throughout the Soviet Union.

The Soviet news agency Tass said the Nagorno-Karabakh problem has been taken up in an extraordinary meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Federation’s Supreme Soviet, or parliament.

Officials attending the meeting, Tass said, expressed “concern and alarm in connection with the situation . . . which it considers contradictory to the further strengthening of friendship, unity and solidarity between all the fraternal peoples of our country.”

Tass said the Armenian and Azerbaijani parliaments were urged “to do everything in their power to restore order and preserve the tranquility of the population.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said Tuesday that a curfew is still in effect in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, where by official Soviet count 32 people were killed and 197 injured in rioting on Feb. 28 and 29. Armenian sources contend that the casualty figures are much higher.

Gerasimov said the ban on travel to the area remains in force. Although the area was calm, he said, “tensions are high.” A strong Soviet military force is keeping peace in the city.