Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Putin, Macron Vow More Karabakh Peace Efforts
• Aza Babayan
Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron
attend a joint press conference, in Moscow, February 7, 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have
pledged to continue jointly seeking an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
through the OSCE Minsk Group co-headed by their countries and the United States.
Putin and Macron met in Moscow on late Monday for talks that focused on the
deepening crisis over Ukraine. They said after the nearly six-hour talks that
the Karabakh issue was also on the agenda.
“We reaffirmed the importance of the work of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs,
including for solving pressing humanitarian and socioeconomic issues in the
region,” Putin told a joint news conference.
Macron likewise said Moscow and Paris are keeping up joint efforts within the
Minsk Group framework.
Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev last month mocked the U.S., Russian and French
diplomats leading the Minsk Group and questioned the wisdom of their continued
activities.
“They must not deal with the Karabakh conflict because that conflict has been
resolved,” Aliyev said, again pointing to the outcome of the 2020 war with
Armenia.
A senior Russian diplomat said a few days later that the U.S., Russian and
French mediators should be able to resume their visits to Karabakh. Armenian
officials backed that statement.
The U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, Lynne Tracy, insisted last week that the
conflict remains unresolved. An Armenian government statement cited her as
backing continued peace efforts “under the aegis of the co-chairmanship of the
OSCE Minsk Group.”
Parliament Majority Blocks Rise In Minimum Wage
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - A session of the National Assembly, Yerevan, December 7, 2021
The Armenian parliament rejected on Tuesday an opposition proposal to increase
the national minimum wage by about 50 percent.
A bill drafted by lawmakers from the main opposition Hayastan alliance would
raise it from 68,000 drams ($140) to 100,000 drams per month. They say that the
measure is needed to offset the increased cost of living which has hit Armenia’s
low-income families particularly hard.
“The cost of the minimum consumer basket rose by 21.7 percent, to 73,400 drams,
last year,” said Hayastan’s Aghvan Vartanian, the main author of the bill.
"Water, gas and electricity became more expensive. Consumer prices went up by
[an average of] 7.2 percent while food prices by 11.7 percent [in 2021.]”
The pro-government majority in the National Assembly refused to even include the
bill on the parliament agenda. Deputies representing it said the sharp rise
sought by the opposition would be premature. Babken Tunian, the chairman of the
parliament committee on economic issues, said that it would reflect negatively
on Armenian businesses and ultimately hurt the poor as well.
The minimum wage was most recently raised more than two years ago. Consumer
prices in Armenia have risen significantly since then, largely reflecting a
global trend.
A senior official said last November that the government is planning to
gradually bring the minimum wage to 85,000 drams by 2026. It will “take the
first steps” in that direction in 2023, he said.
According to the government’s Statistical Committee, the median monthly wage in
Armenia reached 204,000 drams ($425) last year. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
said last week that it has risen by about 25 percent since 2018. But he
acknowledged that higher-than-projected inflation practically nullified the gain.
U.S. Agency ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Karabakh Churches
• Sargis Harutyunyan
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- A view shows Ghazanchetsots Cathedral damaged by recent
shelling during a military conflict over the breakaway region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, in Shushi/Shusha. October 8, 2020
A U.S. government agency has expressed serious concern over the Azerbaijani
government’s plans to erase Armenian inscriptions from churches in areas in and
around Nagorno-Karabakh retaken by Baku as a result of the 2020 war.
Azerbaijan’s Culture Minister Anar Kerimov said on February 3 that he has set up
a working group tasked with removing “false” Armenian traces from churches which
he claimed had been built by Caucasian Albania, an ancient kingdom that covered
much of modern-day Azerbaijan’s territory.
Armenia strongly condemned the development on Tuesday, saying that it is part of
Baku’s attempts to “illegally appropriate” Armenian cultural and religious
heritage.
“It once again demonstrates the fact that the cases of vandalism and destruction
of Armenian historical, cultural and religious heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh
during the 44-day war and the following period are deliberate and pre-planned,
and are part of a policy of depriving Nagorno-Karabakh of its indigenous
Armenian population,” said Vahan Hunanian, the Armenian Foreign Ministry
spokesman.
Hunanian accused Azerbaijan of defying the International Court of Justice (ICJ),
which ordered it last December to “prevent and punish acts of vandalism and
desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage.” He also called for an
“immediate intervention” by UNESCO, another United Nations body.
The head of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nadine
Maenza, echoed the Armenian concerns on the federal government agency’s Twitter
page.
“We are deeply concerned by Azerbaijan's plans to remove Armenian Apostolic
inscriptions from churches,” she said. “We urge the government to preserve and
protect places of worship and other religious and cultural sites.”
Over the past year Armenian officials have accused the Azerbaijani authorities
of systematically desecrating or destroying Armenian monuments in Karabakh.
According to them, at least two churches have been torn down since a
Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the six-week war in November 2020.
They have also accused Baku of vandalizing Karabakh’s Holy Savior Cathedral
located in the Azerbaijani-controlled town of Shushi (Shusha). The 19th century
Armenian church was stripped of its conical domes and covered in scaffolding a
year ago. Azerbaijani officials said it will undergo a major reconstruction.
The Shushi cathedral was twice hit by long-range Azerbaijani missiles during the
war.
An armored personnel carrier of the Russian peacekeeping forces is seen near
Dadivank Monastery, November 24, 2020.
There are also lingering concerns about the fate of the medieval Dadivank
monastery located in the Kelbajar district just west of Karabakh.
Although the district was handed over to Azerbaijan shortly after the 2020
truce, Russian peacekeeping forces set up a permanent post at Dadivank to
protect Armenian clergymen remaining there. For almost a year, the Azerbaijani
side has not allowed the peacekeepers also escort Karabakh Armenian worshippers
to the monastery for religious ceremonies.
Baku claims that Dadivank and just about every other church in the region is
“Albanian.” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev underlined this decades-long
policy in March 2021 when he visited a medieval Armenian church in Karabakh’s
southern Hadrut district captured by the Azerbaijani army.
“All these inscriptions are fake, they were added later,” Aliyev claimed there.
Bishop Vrtanes Abrahamian, the head of the Artsakh (Karabakh) Diocese of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, complained on Tuesday that for all their public
statements the Armenian authorities remain “passive” in the face of what he too
sees as Azerbaijani efforts to erase Armenian traces.
“They only talk and don’t act,” Abrahamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia Rounds On Belarus Leader
• Astghik Bedevian
BELARUS - President Alexander Lukashenko delivers his annual address to the
nation and the National Assembly in Minsk, January 28, 2022.
Armenia on Tuesday shrugged off Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s
claims that it will have no choice but to join a Russian-led “union state” of
former Soviet republics.
In a televised interview with a pro-Kremlin Russian journalist broadcast on
Monday, Lukashenko predicted that Moscow will cobble together a “union of
sovereign states” with common defense, national security and economic systems
over the next 10 to 15 years. He said it will compromise not only Russia and
Belarus but also Central Asian states, Armenia and even Ukraine.
“Armenia has nowhere [else] to go,” claimed the long-serving Belarusian
strongman. “Do you think anyone needs them?”
“They have already seen that. Nikol Vovaevich [Pashinian] has seen that,” he
added in reference to the Armenian prime minister.
Pashinian’s government hit back at Lukashenko through the Armenian Foreign
Ministry and pro-government parliamentarians.
Kazakhstan - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (L) and Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian talk during a CSTO summit in Astana, November 8, 2018.
“We believe that the Belarusian president’s peculiar geopolitical analyses aim
to first and foremost serve his domestic political agenda and have nothing to do
with Armenia and its foreign policy,” the ministry spokesman, Vahan Hunanian,
said in written comments to the press.
Lawmakers representing Pashinian’s Civil Contract party went further, launching
scathing attacks on Lukashenko on the Armenian parliament floor.
“The leader of a partner state has no right to express such thoughts about
another partner state,” one of them, Vagharshak Hakobian, said.
Another Civil Contract deputy, Hovik Aghazarian, accused Lukashenko of “doing
the Russian authorities and Russian statehood a disservice.”
Aghazarian also said: “Before making statements, Lukashenko had better inspect
the airport of [the Belarusian capital] Minsk, which looks more like a pigsty.”
Russia and Belarus signed a Union State treaty in 1999 and have been negotiating
on and off since then.
Lukashenko for years resisted much closer integration between the two nations
envisaged by the treaty. But the authoritarian president has grown more
supportive of the project since Moscow helped him stay in power following a
disputed 2020 presidential election and his ensuing crackdown on dissent which
led to more Western sanctions against Belarus.
Russia – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander
Lukashenko attend a news conference in Moscow, September 9, 2021
Artur Khachatrian, a lawmaker from the main opposition Hayastan alliance, said
the Armenian authorities have only themselves to blame for Lukashenko’s
“unacceptable” remarks. He said they have become too reliant on Russia in
dealing with serious security challenges facing Armenia after the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
“The government deliberately lowered the degree of this country’s sovereignty,
and of course Lukashenko and others will not hesitate to take advantage of
that,” charged Khachatrian.
Lukashenko, who has a warm rapport with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, has
repeatedly raised eyebrows in Yerevan in the past with pro-Azerbaijani
statements on the Karabakh conflict and arms supplies to Baku. In 2018, he also
questioned Armenia’s role in the Collective Security Treaty Organization after
Armenian law-enforcement authorities indicted Yuri Khachaturov, the then
secretary general of the Russian-led military alliance.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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