Tuesday, Karabakh Peace Plan `Not Discussed' In Recent Armenian-Azeri Talks . Sargis Harutyunyan Russi - Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov (C) of Russia, Edward Nalbandian (L) of Armenia and Elmar Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan meet in Moscow, 28Apr2017. Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian insisted on Tuesday that he and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov did not discuss in detail international mediators' existing peace proposals on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when they last met in April. The meeting was hosted in Moscow by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The three top diplomats were joined by the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group after conferring in a trilateral format. "The foreign ministers did not hold negotiations on any document in Moscow," Nalbandian said, denying Mammadyarov's effective claims to the contrary made on Monday. "If there was any text discussed there, it was the text of a [joint] press release that was agreed by the ministers in the presence of the co-chairs." "It was then published by Russia's and Armenia's foreign ministries, while the Azerbaijani foreign ministry published its own version," he told a joint news conference with Estonia's visiting Foreign Minister Sven Mikser. Armenia -- Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian (R) and his Estonian counterpart Sven Mikser at a joint press conference in Yerevan, . The April 28 statement cited by Nalbandian said that the participants of the Moscow talks "stressed the need to fulfill" confidence-building agreements that were reached by Armenia's and Azerbaijan's presidents last year. The agreements call for specific measures to shore up the shaky ceasefire regime in the conflict zone. The Azerbaijani government is reluctant to put those truce safeguards into practice, saying that they could cement the status quo. The Armenian side maintains that progress in substantive peace talks is contingent on introduction of mechanisms for preventing serious ceasefire violations. Nalbandian told the Minsk Group co-chairs that they should take "concrete actions" to force Azerbaijan to de-escalate the conflict when he met with them in Yerevan on Saturday. He claimed on Tuesday that the mediating powers are finally realizing the need for "appropriate steps" against Baku. Aliyev Hails Muslim Support On Karabakh Turkey -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attends the 13th Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit at Istanbul Congress Center (ICC) in Istanbul, April 14, 2016 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has thanked Islamic states for supporting Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and accused the Armenians of committing "crimes against the entire Muslim world." "The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has adopted many documents and resolutions on the conflict," Aliyev was reported on Tuesday to tell the Baku-based ambassadors of Muslim nations. "Those documents support the just position of Azerbaijan." "The support and solidarity shown by Muslim countries is very important to us. I thank members of the organization for that support," he said. Aliyev singled out a joint declaration adopted by the heads of OIC member states at a summit held in Istanbul in April last year. It branded Armenia an "aggressor" and called for more "coercive" measures that would help Azerbaijan restore control over Karabakh. The statement also blamed Yerevan for four-day hostilities in Karabakh that broke out earlier in April 2016. The Armenian government responded by accusing the Islamic bloc of "completely distorting the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict." Armenia maintains cordial relations with some OIC member states, notably Iran. Nagorno-Karabakh - Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque in Shushi, July 2011. Meeting with the foreign envoys, Aliyev also alleged that the Armenians have destroyed Azerbaijani mosques in the Karabakh town of Shushi (Shusha), Aghdam and other "occupied towns.""This is a crime against the entire Muslim world," he charged, according to the APA news agency. "We want all Muslims of the world to know this." While the Shia mosques in Shushi and Aghdam are in need of repairs, they were not destroyed after those towns were captured by Karabakh Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan. The Karabakh leadership claimed in 2010 to have spent over $80,000 on refurbishing them as well as a former Islamic school building in Shushi. It said the cosmetic repairs there were also sponsored by the Karabakh diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The authorities in Stepanakert announced in December last year that they have contracted an unnamed Iranian company to complete the reconstruction of Shushi's 19th century Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque. Farmers Demand Government Aid After Hailstorm . Anush Muradian Armenia - A farmer in Armavir province shows his fields hit by a powerful hailstorm, 13Jun2017. Hundreds of angry farmers blocked a road in Armenia on Tuesday to demand that the government compensate them for massive damage caused by a powerful hailstorm that swept through the country the previous night. The protesters were mainly residents of eight villages in the Armavir province west of Yerevan which reportedly bore the brunt of the storm. According to the Armenian Agriculture Ministry, hailstones destroyed between 40 and 100 percent of crops grown in those communities. Local residents thus fully or partly lost their main source income for this year. Many of them have outstanding debts to commercial banks. They planned to repay their agricultural loans with proceeds from sales of their fruits and vegetables. "The hail destroyed the whole harvest here," said one of the villagers blocking an Armavir highway. "Whatever money was invested here is lost." "We need to have some kind of assistance from the state so that we can feel better and don't leave this country," said another man. The protesters unblocked the road after Deputy Agriculture Minister Ashot Harutiunian and Armavir's governor, Ashot Ghahramanian, visited and spoke to them. The officials, who also toured the affected communities, promised to submit compensation proposals to the government within the next ten days. The farmers were skeptical about those assurances. "They say that [repayment of] our loans will be postponed until next year," one of them told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "But we haven't seen such things until now." "Last year there was an even stronger hailstorm," said another villager. "Not a single leaf was left on these trees. Our governor fooled us, saying that they will compensate and help us in every other way. But they did nothing." The protesting farmers also complained about the absence of hail cannons in most of their communities. An Agriculture Ministry statement quoted Harutiunian as saying that hail cannons deployed in other parts of Armavir as well as the neighboring Aragatsotn province "worked intensively" during Monday's hailstorm. "Otherwise, the damage would have been much greater," the vice-minister said. Every year a considerable part of farming production in Armenia is lost due to hail. The Armenian government has sought to limit the damage by financing or subsidizing the installation of hundreds of hail cannons across the country. Many villages still lack such facilities. Also, the effectiveness of the cannons is questioned by some agriculture experts. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Karen Karapetian discussed with relevant government officials alternative ways of protecting harvests, including anti-hail nets. Armenia `Reliable Partner' For NATO . Tatevik Lazarian Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (R) meets with NATO envoy James Appathurai in Yerevan, 13Jun2017. Armenia is a "reliable partner" of NATO and its close ties with Russia have caused no problems for the Western alliance, according to a senior NATO envoy. The official, James Appathurai, described as "excellent" the South Caucasus nation's increased cooperation with NATO at the start of his latest visit to Yerevan on Monday. "We fully respect the balanced foreign policy that Armenia has," Appathurai told a news conference. "It causes us no complication that Armenia is, for example, in the [Russian-led] Collective Security Treaty Organization or the Eurasian Economic Union." "Armenia has been a reliable partner for NATO," added NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's special representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Appathurai met with President Serzh Sarkisian on Tuesday for talks that focused on NATO-Armenia ties, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and broader regional security. Armenia's relationship with neighboring Iran was also on the agenda, according to a statement released by the presidential press office. Armenia -- NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia James Appathurai at a news conference in Yerevan, . The statement said Sarkisian "recalled with fondness" his most recent meeting with Stoltenberg held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels in late February. Speaking after those talks, Stoltenberg praised NATO's "partnership" with Armenia and spoke of "opportunities for us to cooperate more closely on interoperability, defense reform and defense education." Despite its close military alliance with Russia, Armenia has forged closer links with NATO -- and the United States in particular -- since the early 2000s. It currently contributes around 130 troops to NATO-led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and regularly participates in multinational exercises organized by U.S. forces in Europe. In 2015, Yerevan expressed readiness to participate in more such missions abroad with specialized medical and demining units. U.S. military instructors began training Armenian military personnel for that purpose last year. Appathurai cautioned that while the two sides will carry on with their "steady cooperation" he does not expect "dramatic leaps forward" in their relations. Press Review "Zhoghovurd" comments on Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian's calls for the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to "rein in" Azerbaijan not only with statements but also "concrete actions." The paper says an Armenian Foreign Ministry statement on Nalbandian's weekend meeting with the co-chairs did not specify what those actions should be. "We wonder how he sees the realization of his appeal," it says. "At least, there is no legal document giving the co-chairs the right to impose sanctions on official Baku or Yerevan. The OSCE Minsk Group is not the UN Security Council and its co-chairs are only mediators. So such statements by Nalbandian may not be taken seriously by the international community or the co-chairs." "Hayots Ashkhar" suggests that "serious international pressure" on Baku is now essential for preventing another sharp escalation of the Karabakh conflict. It is only natural, the paper says, that Yerevan now expects "tough and explicit warnings" from the U.S., Russian and French mediators ahead of their visit to Baku. It says that renewed peace talks in the absence of mechanisms for preventing ceasefire violations in the conflict zone would only tempt the Azerbaijani leadership to provoke the kind of hostilities that broke out in April 2016. William Lahue, the head of NATO's regional Liaison Office in Tbilisi, tells "Aravot" that Armenia's relations with Iran "do not matter at all" to the Western alliance. "You have a cooperation framework, you are a sovereign state, and you decide the circle of you relationships with other countries and allies," he says. "If there is a decision to impose an embargo on Iran, it will also be a decision by sovereign states. And let me say this: states usually avoid embargoes and want to have them lifted. But it's not NATO's businesses. It's up to member states and allies." "Haykakan Zhamanak" comments on what it sees as a suspicious increase in food prices in Armenia that has been reported by the National Statistical Service (NSS) for a second consecutive month. The NSS said on Monday that they were up in May by more than 6 percent from the same period in 2016. The paper says that it is not yet clear which foodstuffs became more expensive in the past year. It claims that the NSS is "hiding" more detailed information about consumer prices in the country. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org