Month: June 2022

The government approved today the proposal to sign a grant agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the United States of America. The grant program aims to assist Armenia in the process of reforms targeted at strengthening democracy and economic stability.

The USAID investment to achieve the objectives totals $120,000,000, which will be disbursed in parts. USAID will provide $68,565,000 to promote democracy and $51,435,000 to improve economic security.

Taking into account the shocks caused by the COVID-19, the war unleashed against Artsakh in 2020, as well as the fair and transparent parliamentary elections of 2021, “with this document the US undertakes to support the Republic of Armenia in effective and accountable management, preservation of democratic achievements and overcoming the economic challenges.”

While in Washington DC at the Chiefs of Mission Conference at the State Department, Ambassadors Tracy, Degnan, and Litzenberger exchanged ideas and coordinated policies and programs in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

They underscored our commitment to strengthening our partnerships, supporting independence, and promoting a more secure, stable, and prosperous future for the people of the region.

ArmInfo. The member of the RA NA delegation to PACE Sona Ghazaryan gave a speech at PACE Plenary Session.

“I highly appreciate the report, well-penned and very much on time.  Political parties, among other actors, are responsible for combating  hate speech, racism, and xenophobia. However, what we often see today  is that political parties, instead, build their election campaigns,  rhetoric, sometimes even actions on hatred, racism, and xenophobia.

This happens in Europe, and this happens beyond Europe.

And then sometimes, these political parties and their leaders find  themselves in their own trap. They build up and build on hate so much  that they then do not know how to control and deal with the amount of  hatred they have created themselves.

This is especially dangerous when hatred is proliferated towards a  society living in close proximity, towards a neighbor. And even more  dangerous when there is an unresolved conflict in need of a robust  peace process. This is the case in the context of the  Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the systemic Armenophobia in  Azerbaijan.

You know too well the case of the trophy park in Baku that glorifies  war and that depicted Armenian soldiers in captivity degrading human  dignity and dehumanizing Armenians. Schoolchildren were taken to this  park. This was an outrageous case of state-sponsored hatred and  racism. The mannequins of Armenian soldiers were taken down only  after Armenia filed a case at the International Court of Justice  based on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial  Discrimination.

The International Court of Justice has already produced an interim  decision in which it calls on Azerbaijan to “take all necessary  measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred and  discrimination, including by its officials and public institutions,  targeted at persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin.” I would  like to draw your attention to the fact that the International Court  of Justice has stated that it is the officials and public  institutions in Azerbaijan that incite and promote hatred against  Armenians.

I believe that the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly  should also be very vocal and direct calling state-level hate speech,  racism and xenophobia by name, and we should together combat this  because hatred is a poison similar to mercury; it is very hard to  collect once it spills over.” Sona Ghazaryan said in her speech.

ArmInfo. Against the backdrop of Baku’s desire to force to renounce any status of Artsakh, dilute it with the rest of Azerbaijan, holding Artsakh people as hostages,  Armenian interests in this matter have not even been formulated yet.  Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, former Foreign Minister  of Artsakh Arman Melikyan expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

“And the fact that before the 44-day war these interests were  expressed in the maintenance of the status quo, the preservation of  which was guaranteed by external, and not by our own forces, is the  biggest problem of the Armenian statehood. Having a formal toolkit  for conducting foreign policy, our state has all these years did not  even try to form an alternative agenda, although such ideas were  proposed. As a result, today the restoration of sovereignty requires  a lot of consistent work,” he said.

In the opinion of the diplomat, in today’s realities, this work, the  search for ways to outline the most important problems and ways to  solve them, should be carried out outside the state and political  institutions by a professional team. While, unfortunately, the expert  and analytical circles in Armenia are busy serving either the  interests of the authorities or the interests of external forces, but  certainly not the interests of Armenia. Moreover, in both cases this  is done by analytical justification of already committed, rather than  predicted actions.

Meanwhile, according to Melikyan, it is pointless to talk about the  security guarantees of the people of Artsakh if Artsakh does not have  a status. While in the current situation, Baku not only does not  intend to do this at all, but also claims that even the NKAO does not  exist, referring to the decision to disband it, taken back in the  early 1990s. While according to Melikyan, Artsakh should have a  status in any case. Just like ithad it, starting with the formation  of the USSR. In this light, it is impossible to consider Artsakh as a  part of sovereign Azerbaijan under any circumstances.  “Another  important problem is Baku’s attempts to draw parallels between the  rights of Artsakh people and, for example, Azerbaijanis who  previously lived in Syunik. One should never confuse the issue of  human rights with the right of a particular territory to have state  status. Meanwhile, unlike the Azerbaijanis living in Armenia earlier,  the Artsakh Armenians had this right yesterday and still have it  today. And Armenia abandoned its natural mission of protecting the  rights of more than half a million Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan,  and thus provided Baku with the opportunity today to express its  readiness to protect the rights of all Armenians in Azerbaijan  without granting the status to Artsakh,” the diplomat summed up.

ArmInfo.Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan gave a interview to response to the Public Television of Armenia. 

“We should be realists,” he said in response to a question about the  opposition’s argument that Artsakh can never be part of Azerbaijan. 

“If you state this, you lose room for maneuver. We should be capable  of differentiating between policy, diplomacy and populism and public  statements. But we are not doing so. We should not disable the people  responsible for the country and participating in the negotiations.  The premier was courageous enough to say it straightforward. What is  bad about it? Not everything should be made public. At present I am  not reporting the details of my private meetings as I had no  agreement with that person and I have no right to speak about that.  But I realize the risks of saying something aloud. The difference is  great,” the president said. 

And opposition members are perfectly aware of that. Some of them  found themselves in similar situations, and in this respect their  behavior is giving rise to questions. 

“If we take the Artsakh problem to heart – and I am sure we all do so  – this concern must be reflected in each of us doing what they  should. The opposition has its own business, the authorities are well  aware of their role and our society has its work to do,” the  president said. 

As to the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the opposition,  Mr Khachaturyan stated his readiness. 

“But provided that it is a civilized dialogue, in a civilized  language. I am not going to educate anyone. We are too old for that,”  Mr Khachaturyan said. The opposition has been refusing to start a  dialogue since the very beginning, he added.

ArmInfo. It is high time for Yerevan to get rid of illusions on the issue of normalizing relations with Turkey. Victor Nadein-Raevsky, Ph.D. in Philosophy, director of  the Institute of Political and Social Studies of the Black  Sea-Caspian region, senior researcher of IMEMO RAS (Russia) expressed  a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

“Everything, literally everything, is on the surface and is visible  even to the naked eye. Turkey and Azerbaijan act in a single bond and  pursue a rather ingenious policy in all vectors, including the  Russian one. Their cooperation with the West is also similarly  situational, which Ankara and Baku also bring under their interests.  Against such a background, the current policy and calculations of  Yerevan, to put it mildly, raise questions,” he said.

The expert believes that Ankara’s periodic mention of the absence of  prerequisites for the process of Armenian-Turkish normalization is  Turkey’s desire to formalize this process properly, first of all, for  its visual perception by the West. While in reality there is simply  no meaningful meaning in these statements, in his opinion. Since the  mere linking of Turkey’s own interests in this matter with the  interests of Azerbaijan is already a precondition.

Meanwhile, according to Nadein-Raevsky, the interconnectedness of the  processes between Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan is already quite  openly mentioned in the administration of the Azerbaijani president.   And before that, this was quite clear based on the statements of  Turkish high-ranking officials. All this together allows us to assert  that without the consent of Baku, Turkey will not make a single step  towards the Armenian direction.  “In other words, it is obvious that  Baku will give Ankara consent to the same opening of the Armenian-  Turkish border only when an agreement is reached in the  Armenian-Azerbaijani direction. Opening the border between Armenia  and Turkey without negotiations over the signing of a peace treaty  between Armenia and Azerbaijan is impossible. This is a reality that  cannot be ignored. Everything else in the Armenian-Turkish  normalization is derived precisely from this reality,” the  orientalist summed up.