Monday, November 2, 2020
Armenia Upbeat On 2021 Economic Growth Despite Pandemic, War
Armenia -- A textile factory in Berd
Despite the coronavirus pandemic and continuing war in Nagorno-Karabakh Armenia
expects its economy to grow by 4.8 percent in 2021, the government in Yerevan
said in unveiling next year’s budget this week.
The document submitted to the National Assembly on November 2 calls for 1.5
trillion drams (about $3 billion) in taxes and duties, which is higher than this
year’s revenue pattern.
Under a revised budget for this year the Armenian government expects to raise
only 1.32 trillion drams ($2.65 billion) in taxes and duties.
The total revenues of the state budget next year are expected to amount to 1
trillion 569 billion drams (over $3.1 billion) and the spending pattern is
projected at 1 trillion 843 billion drams (over $3.7 billion). The budget
deficit is estimated at 274 billion drams or more than $551 million according to
the current exchange rate.
In presenting the budget in parliament Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian
expressed confidence that due to efficient work the government will be able to
achieve success despite challenges posed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Deputy Prime Minister or Armenia Mher Grigorian
“Obviously, 2021 will be a tough year for all of us. But I am sure that as a
result of our joint work we will be able to have a budget that will consider all
possible risks and challenges, generate sufficient resources for their effective
neutralization and counteraction, and also ensure the socio-economic stability
and security of our country,” the vice-premier said.
According to the same document, Armenia will close 2020 with an economic decline
at 6 percent.
“Of course, we cannot say that martial law has not affected the economy and
budget in any way. Of course, it has and will continue to affect the revenue
pattern of the budget, and we should think about the debt threshold accordingly.
But I believe that we will find the balance that will allow us to get out of
this situation,” Grigorian said.
For his part Finance Minister Atom Janjugazian did not exclude that this year’s
economic decline may be even steeper – at 6.8 percent. “After making this
6-percent decline forecast we once again revised our budget estimations,
concluding that because of the hostilities [in Nagorno-Karabakh] we may expect
an additional negative development of 0.8 percentage points this year,” he said.
According to the draft state budget for 2021, by the end of this year Armenia’s
state debt will stand at $8 billion 850 million, and by the end of next year it
will amount to $9 billion 215 million.
Karabakh Armenians Confirm Senior Commander’s Death
Ethnic Armenian military authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have confirmed the
death of a senior commander as military and civilian casualties in the armed
conflict with Azerbaijan continued to rise on Monday.
The military’s press service on November 2 released the names of 11 more
servicemen killed in action since the start of hostilities on September 27,
which raises the total death toll among ethnic Armenian forces to 1,174.
Among those 11 is also deputy commander of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Defense Army,
Colonel Artur Sarkisian. Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto Defense Minister,
Lieutenant-General Jalal Harutiunian was replaced last week after being wounded.
Azerbaijan does not reveal its military casualties, considering them a wartime
secret.
During November 2 the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides have also accused each
other of targeting civilian areas.
According to spokesperson of Armenia’s Defense Ministry Shushan Stepanian, at
around 6:10 pm Azerbaijan’s armed forces opened artillery fire in the direction
of the positions of the armed forces of Armenia and the settlement of David Bek
in the country’s southern Syunik province. She said that one civilian was killed
and two others were wounded by the artillery fire.
An RFE/RL Armenian Service correspondent working in Nagorno-Karabakh reported
that the town of Martakert in the northeast of the region was again shelled by
Azerbaijan’s armed forces today.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said on November 2 that several
civilian settlements in the Tartar region inside Azerbaijan had been shelled by
ethnic Armenian troops.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the ongoing conflict.
Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has called for an
international inquiry into the alleged participation of mercenaries from Syria
and Libya on Azerbaijan’s side in the conflict.
“This issue should be the subject of an international inquiry,” Pashinian said
on Facebook after the Armenian side had shown videos of interrogations of two
Syrian fighters that Armenians say were taken prisoner on the battlefield.
Both Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey, have denied the involvement of mercenaries
in the hostilities.
Aliyev Urges Russia To Stay Neutral In Karabakh Conflict
• Armen Koloyan
AZERBAIJAN -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev gestures as he speaks during an
address to the nation in Baku, October 26, 2020
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has called on Russia to maintain neutrality
in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh given its status as an
international mediator.
According to Interfax-Azerbaijan, while receiving in Baku Secretary-General of
the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States Baghdad Amreyev on Monday,
Aliyev said: “The prime minister of Armenia has sent a letter to the president
of the Russian Federation, asking for military support. This is completely
unacceptable. And there are absolutely no grounds for that, because we are
conducting actions in our territory, we are defeating the enemy in our lands,
freeing them from the Armenian occupation, while we do not attack the territory
of Armenia.”
Aliyev went on to say that as a co-chair of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group Russia is supposed to maintain a
neutral position on this issue, which he said is stipulated by the mandate of
the OSCE, whose Minsk Group co-chairmanship also includes the United States and
France.
On October 31, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian sent a letter to Russian
President Vladimir Putin in which, invoking a 1997 treaty with Russia, he
formally asked Moscow “to define types and amount of assistance” that it can
provide to Armenia. Pashinian said that the fighting between ethnic Armenian
forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan that broke out on September 27 was
approaching the country’s borders and that some encroachments on the territory
of the Republic of Armenia have already taken place.
ARMENIA -- Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian during a meeting on the sidelines of a session of the
Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Yerevan, Armenia October 1, 2019.
In response to the letter the same day, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
reaffirmed Moscow’s commitment to Armenia under the 1997 Treaty on Friendship,
Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, saying that “Russia will render all necessary
assistance to Yerevan if military operations take place directly on the
territory of Armenia.”
At the same time, the Russian ministry again called on the parties to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to halt military operations immediately, deescalate
the situation and return to “substantive negotiations” to achieve a peaceful
settlement.
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinian also signaled Yerevan’s agreement to
the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone,
but said that such a move would require the consent of all parties to the
conflict.
Last week, U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said that he believes
that Scandinavian peacekeepers should be deployed in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict zone.
Meetings with members of the Armenian community of Los Angeles on Friday,
October 30, O’Brien said any armed peacekeeping force in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict zone should not include Minsk Group co-chairs, including the United
States, or neighboring countries.
“Any sort of Turkish mediation or peacekeeping role is a non-starter for the
United States, as well as for Armenia,” O’Brien said.
“We believe that both countries should accept Scandinavian peacekeepers, and we
are working with Scandinavian governments to put together a peacekeeping force
that could be deployed into the region to keep the ceasefire,” the senior U.S.
official added.
Commenting on O’Brien’s statement on Monday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister
Andrei Rudenko said that issues like this should be coordinated with the parties
to the conflict.
“You should ask the Americans where they got these proposals and ideas from. All
the necessary parameters of possible mechanisms should be agreed upon in
consultations with the parties to the conflict,” the Russian diplomat said when
asked by journalists to comment on O’Brien’s remarks.
Officials in Yerevan and Baku have not yet commented on O’Brien’s statement.
Armenian Police Vow Tougher Approach As Coronavirus Cases Spike Amid Karabakh War
Armenia -- A masked police officer patrols streets of Yerevan, July 10, 2020.
Armenia’s police have warned citizens to abide by the mandatory rule of wearing
face masks in all public spaces or face fines as the numbers of new coronavirus
cases and resulting deaths have soared in recent days amid continuing
Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In what appears to be a second and much stronger wave of the pandemic Armenia
has been recording more than 2,000 new cases and several dozen deaths a day
during the last week or so.
Since the start of the epidemic in March, more than 93,000 people have tested
positive for the novel coronavirus in a country with a population of about 3
million. According to Armenian health officials, 1,391 of these people have so
far died from COVID-19, making it one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the
world (469 deaths per million).
According to the Health Ministry, hospitals in Armenia are overwhelmed with
coronavirus patients, with as many as 576 people needing hospitalization
currently on the waiting list due to the shortage of hospital beds.
The healthcare situation in Armenia is complicated by an ongoing armed conflict
with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh from where hundreds of wounded ethnic
Armenian servicemen and scores of civilians have been brought to Armenia for
treatment since the hostilities began on September 27.
Government officials and healthcare specialists in Armenia believe that the war
situation has largely affected the epidemiological state of affairs as people –
servicemen, volunteers, others involved in wartime activities – began to care
less about social-distancing and mask-wearing rules, which have been mandatory
in Armenia for months and at one point in September admittedly led to a dramatic
decrease in the infection rate.
Deputy Chief of Armenia’s Police Ara Fidanian warned citizens on Monday that
from now on police officers will pay greater attention to enforcing the
anti-epidemic rules by fining those who break them. He acknowledged that in
recent weeks Armenian law-enforcement bodies have been more preoccupied with
duties emanating from the current martial law regime, issuing much fewer fines
for breaking anti-epidemic rules.
“Although we have mainly focused our efforts on ensuring the legal regime of
martial law, we are now engaging additional forces, including female police
officers, in the fight against the novel coronavirus,” Fidanian said, adding
that control will also cover public transport.
Failing to wear a face mask in public spaces in Armenia, including in public
transport, may result in a fine of 10,000 drams (about $20) imposed on the
offender. Citizens caught breaking the rule may be find an additional 10,000
drams if they have no passport or other ID around them.
Armenia Slams Turkey, Azerbaijan As Syrian Fighters Captured In Karabakh
The building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia in Yerevan
Armenia has accused Turkey and Azerbaijan of seeking to give the conflict in
Nagorno-Karabakh an inter-religious character by bringing in jihadists from the
Middle East to fight there.
In a statement released on November 1 Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said
that at least two mercenaries from Syria had been captured by Nagorno-Karabakh’s
ethnic Armenian defense army during the fighting with Azerbaijan in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto ethnic Armenian authorities showed videos of two men
whom said they had been recruited in Syria by Turkey to fight for Azerbaijan for
a monthly pay of $2,000. One of them said they were also promised an extra
payment for each “beheaded infidel.”
“The transfer of jihadists to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone reveals the
intentions of the Turkish-Azerbaijani leadership to give the conflict an
inter-religious character,” Armenia’s ministry said.
“This is a completely new manifestation of the expansion of terrorism, when
foreign terrorist fighters and jihadists from the Middle East have been deployed
to the conflict zone in the OSCE area; it is a serious threat to international
and regional security and stability,” the statement added, stressing that
“Armenia will continue to undertake consistent steps in the fight against
international terrorism, in that regard cooperating with all interested
partners.”
Russia, France, the United States, Iran and other countries and international
organizations have also voiced their concern about credible reports of Syrian
mercenaries being involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh fighting.
Azerbaijan and Turkey have denied recruiting any mercenaries to fight in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, instead accusing Armenia of having PKK (Kurdish
Workers’ Party) fighters and other mercenaries fighting on its side, a claim
discarded by Yerevan as groundless.
Yerevan’s arguments on the presence of mercenaries on the Azerbaijani side have
also been supported by multiple investigative reports by Western journalists,
some of which alleged that Turkey began recruiting jihadist fighters to be later
deployed in Azerbaijan as early as July.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun) last month one such
journalist, Lindsey Snell, estimated that the number of Syrian mercenaries
fighting for Azerbaijan at one point was around 2,000.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based human
rights organization, at least 217 Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries have been
killed in the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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