Wednesday, June 2, 2021
EU President Talks To Armenian, Azeri Leaders
BELGIUM -- European Council President Charles Michel speaks during a media
conference at an EU summit in Brussels, May 25, 2021
The European Union’s top official met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian in Brussels and spoke with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev by phone
on Wednesday to discuss the continuing border dispute between their countries.
European Council President Charles Michel called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to
fully comply with a Russian-brokered agreement that stopped their war over
Nagorno-Karabakh last November.
A spokesman for Michel said he also told Pashinian and Aliyev that the EU is
“ready to provide expertise on border delimitation and demarcation and to
support confidence building.”
“The European Union also encourages both parties to cooperate, as matter of
urgency, on the return of detainees and full transparency with regard to mine
fields, and other important humanitarian issues,” the official, Barend Leyts,
added in a statement. “The EU is providing almost 20 million euros ($24.4
million) in humanitarian assistance and will continue to be engaged.”
According to an Armenian government statement on Pashinian’s talks with Michel,
the head of the EU’s main decision-making body welcomed Yerevan’s efforts to
find a peaceful solution to the dispute that broke out after Azerbaijani troops
reportedly crossed several sections of the border and advanced a few kilometers
into Armenian territory three weeks ago.
The statement cited Pashinian as calling for an “adequate” international
reaction to “Azerbaijan’s provocative actions.” It said he also discussed with
Michel the possible deployment of international observers along contested
sections of the border which he proposed on May 27.
An EU foreign policy spokesman welcomed Pashinian’s proposal on May 28. The
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry effectively dismissed it earlier this week, however.
Armenian Authorities Accused Of Disrespecting War Dead
• Susan Badalian
Armenia - The bodies and body parts of Armenian soldiers killed in action are
stored at a morgue in Abovian.
The director and two other employees of a morgue were fired on Wednesday as the
Armenian authorities faced accusations of showing disrespect to the bodies of
Armenian soldiers killed during last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
At least 3,800 of them died during six weeks of heavy fighting with Azerbaijani
forces stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November. Hundreds of others
remain unaccounted for.
Their relatives have regularly staged protests in recent months to demand that
the Armenian government do more to recover the bodies of their loved ones or
shed more light on their whereabouts. Many of them distrust official data on
still unidentified bodies of dead soldiers kept at Armenian morgues.
On Monday, some angry relatives forced their way into the mortuaries to count
the number of corpses and body parts stored there. They took pictures inside a
morgue in Abovian, a town 15 kilometers north of Yerevan.
The photographs circulated on social media showed plastic bags filled with human
remains lying on the ground in its basement, which was not refrigerated to
prevent their decomposition. They caused uproar in the country, with many
accusing the authorities of dishonoring the Armenian soldiers killed in action.
The Armenian Ministry of Health initially denied that their remains are kept in
degrading conditions. But Health Minister Anahit Avanesian publicly apologized
to soldiers’ families on Tuesday, saying that she was wrong not to have
personally inspected the Abovian morgue.
The scandal continued unabated, however. One of the relatives publicized on
Tuesday night a short video of the morgue basement.
Avanesian formally reprimanded Mher Bisharian, the head of a state center of
forensic medicine overseeing the Armenian mortuaries, the following morning.
Bisharian in turned sacked the director and two other workers of the Abovian
morgue.
“We fired them because they didn’t perform their duties properly,” Bisharian
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He said they should have placed the remains on
stretchers and stored them in a more orderly way.
Bisharian said that the remains were taken to the Abovian facility because a
refrigerated morgue truck where they were kept until May 28 broke down. He said
they were “temporarily” stored in the basement due to a lack of space in the
morgue’s refrigerated rooms.
The official added that the remains were transported on Tuesday to a
refrigerated facility in Martuni, a town 130 kilometers north of Yerevan.
Sofia Hovsepian, an independent member of Armenia’s outgoing parliament critical
of the government, dismissed the authorities’ response to the scandal which she
said highlights their “impunity” and lack of empathy for the families of the war
dead.
“Instead of firing the three individuals they should have sacked and prosecuted
the health minister and the former health minister [Arsen Torosian, the current
chief of the Armenian government’s staff,]” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Hovsepian claimed that many bodies of the deceased soldiers were for months kept
at another morgue not equipped with refrigerators and that the authorities
transported them to more suitable facilities only after her persistent
complaints.
According to the authorities, 200 corpses and 400 body parts of dead soldiers
are currently kept there. Officials say that DNA samples taken from them match
those of nearly 100 families of the missing soldiers. They say those families
refuse to take and bury the corresponding remains because they do not trust the
results of the forensic tests.
About 70 other families are said to have refused to give their DNA samples to
the authorities for the same reason.
Government Promises Greater Input From Defense Industry
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia -- A worker shows Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian a Kalashnikov AK-103
rifle assembled at the Neitron company plant in Abovian, July 7, 2020.
The Armenian government’s efforts to expand the domestic defense industry
intensified after the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh and will bear fruit soon,
Minister of High-Tech Industry Hayk Chobanian said on Wednesday.
Chobanian said that Armenian defense firms will contribute more advanced weapons
and other military hardware to the country’s arms forces.
“We are now making significant changes in this area,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service. “Some successes have already been achieved. Concrete programs, which
have never been implemented before, are being implemented now.”
“I believe that we will have changes in this sector within months. We will have
the first substantial changes in terms of the involvement of Armenia’s
military-industrial complex in the defense of Armenia’s borders,” he said.
Chobanian, whose ministry oversees the Armenian defense industry, shed no light
on those programs or specify new weapons developed by domestic companies.
The latter are known to manufacture various types of ammunition as well as
unmanned aerial vehicles which the Armenian army had begun receiving years
before the outbreak of last year’s war with Azerbaijan.
One such company, DAVARO, has teamed up with several other local firms to design
and manufacture both military and civilian drones.
“There has been a quite a bit of consolidation in the sector after the war.
Defense and software development companies have joined forces and expect quite
good results,” its chief executive, Davit Galoyan, said on Wednesday.
Aleksandr Yesayan, the chairman of Armenia’s Union of Advanced Technology
Enterprises, stressed the importance of such consolidation.
“Scale is very important for the defense industry in both the internal and
external markets,” said Yesayan. “If you don’t have a [serious] production
volume you can’t compete with, say, Israeli companies.”
Georgia Reopens Armenian Border For Travel
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - The Armenian-Georgian border crossing at Bavra, October 1, 2017.
Georgia has reopened its land border with Armenia to travelers more than one
year after closing it to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Both neighboring states shut down their borders in March 2020 following the
outbreak of the pandemic. The Georgian-Armenian border has since remained open
for only cargo shipments.
The Armenian government began easing its entry ban for foreigners later in 2020
and lifted it altogether in January this year.
By contrast, Georgia as kept its borders with Armenia as well as neighboring
Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey closed up until this month. The Georgian
government announced last week that they will be reopened on June 1 to travelers
who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have tested negative against the
virus up to three days prior to their arrival in the country.
Two of the three main Armenian-Georgian border crossings thus fully resumed
their work on Tuesday. Most of the first travelers using them appeared to be
Georgian citizens of Armenian descent.
“I have come from Georgia to visit my relatives,” one of them told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service “It’s very good that the borders are open again.”
Armenian customs officials warned people heading for Georgia to have documentary
evidence of both their vaccination and negative test results.
Individuals entering Armenia by air or via its land borders are also required to
provide such documentation or undergo coronavirus tests upon arrival.
Georgia and especially its Black Sea resorts were a popular travel destination
for Armenian holidaymakers before the pandemic. Also, many Armenians traveled to
and from Russia via Georgia.
According to official statistics, the number of tourists visiting Armenia and
Georgia plummeted by more than 80 percent last year.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.