Thursday,
More Progress Reported In Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Talks
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Armenian Foreign Minister
Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minoster Jeyhun Bayramov, Washington,
June 27, 2023.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers made further progress towards a
bilateral peace treaty but still disagree on some of its key terms, official
Yerevan said on Thursday night after they concluded a new round of U.S.-mediated
negotiations.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov
met outside Washington for three consecutive days. They also held trilateral
meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security
Adviser Jake Sullivan.
“The Ministers and their teams continued progress on the draft bilateral
‘Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations,’” read a
statement released by the Armenian Foreign Ministry.
“They reached an agreement on additional articles and advanced mutual
understanding of the draft agreement, meanwhile acknowledging that the positions
on some key issues require further work,” it said, adding that Mirzoyan and
Bayramov pledged to “continue their negotiations.”
The statement did not disclose those articles or the remaining sticking points.
It reflected Blinken’s comments made during the final session of the three-day
talks.
The top U.S. diplomat also said that “there remains hard work to be done to try
to reach a final agreement.”
“I think there is also a clear understanding on everyone’s part that the closer
you get to reaching agreement, in some cases the harder it gets by definition.
The most difficult issues are left for the end,” added Blinken.
The two sides were understood to disagree before the latest talks on practical
modalities of delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and a dialogue between
Baku and Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership as well as international safeguards
against non-compliance with the treaty.
Yerevan has been pressing for an “international mechanism” for such a dialogue,
saying that it is essential for protecting “the rights and security” of
Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population. Bayramov made clear late last week that
Baku will not agree to any special security arrangements for the Karabakh
Armenians.
Minister Confident About Grape Purchases By Armenian Brandy Giant
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia -- A truckload of grapes is transported to a storage facility in Ararat
region run by the Yerevan Brandy Company, 14Sep2010
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said on Thursday that Armenia’s leading brandy
producer will not cut back on purchases of grapes from domestic farmers this
year despite the uncertain future of its vital exports to Russia.
The French group Pernod Ricard, which owns the Yerevan Brandy Company (YBC),
announced in May that all of its subsidiaries around the world will stop
exporting alcoholic beverages to Russia.
The move linked to Western sanctions against Moscow raised serious concerns in
Armenia about the YBC’s continued operations. The bulk of its brandy, famous
across the former Soviet Union, is sold in Russia. More importantly, the company
has long been Armenia’s largest wholesale buyer of grapes grown by tens of
thousands of farmers.
“[YBC] will not reduce the volume of its purchases compared with the previous
years,” Kerobian told journalists. “This was our main concern and it has been
dispelled.”
The YBC management has made no statements to that effect, however. It also
remains reluctant to officially comment on the future of its exports to Russia.
Russian and Armenian media outlets quoted unnamed company sources as saying
after the Pernod Ricard announcement that the YBC is continuing brandy shipments
to the Russian market.
Armenia - A vineyard in Armavir province, October 10, 2022.
Other Armenian brandy makers look set to buy fewer grapes this year. They
already cut their purchases in 2022, sparking protests by hundreds of angry
winegrowers unable to sell their main crop.
“The situation is already uncertain,” Arsen Simonian, a farmer from the
wine-growing Ararat province, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Simonian, who owns a large vineyard in the village of Verin Artashat and heads a
provincial association of winegrowers, said that about one-fifth of the local
farmers have already decided to cut down their vineyards and possibly switch to
other crops.
“We do not expect that the entire [2023] grape harvest will be bought,” Kerobian
acknowledged earlier this month. “We are now trying to figure out methods for
making the two ends meet.”
The minister said on Thursday that the Armenian government will impose stricter
quality controls and other regulations on local brandy firms.
“Control of the quality of brandy will definitely lead to a large volume of
[grape] purchases,” he said.
Simonian agreed that such oversight could greatly benefit grape farmers. But he
questioned the government’s ability to enforce it properly.
U.S. Sanctions Official Visits Armenia
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets James O'Brien, head of the U.S.
Department of State's Sanctions Coordination Office, Yerevan, .
A senior U.S. official met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday for
talks that were expected to focus on Armenia’s compliance with Western sanctions
imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. Embassy in Armenia said earlier in the day that James O’Brien, the
sanctions coordinator at the State Department, has arrived in Yerevan to discuss
with Pashinian and other Armenian officials “cooperation on U.S. sanctions” and
“express appreciation for Armenia’s continued commitment to upholding U.S.
sanctions.”
An Armenian government statement on Pashinian’s talks with O’Brien did not
mention the issue. It said the two men spoke about the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, Turkish-Armenian relations and “various issues of mutual interest.”
O’Brien arrived in the Armenian capital from Tbilisi where he held similar talks
with Georgian leaders earlier this week.
U.S. officials pressed the Armenian government to prevent Russia from evading
the sanctions through Armenian companies during a series of meetings held this
spring. Pashinian said on May 22 that despite its “strategic” relations with
Russia Armenia “cannot afford to be placed under Western sanctions.”
A few days later, Pashinian’s government announced that Armenian exporters will
now need government permission to deliver microchips, transformers, video
cameras, antennas and other electronic equipment to Russia. The Armenian
Ministry of Economy, which proposed the measure, cited the need to prevent the
use of such items by foreign defense industries.
The Armenian Central Bank essentially confirmed on June 7 reports that local
commercial banks have frequently blocked payments for such supplies wired by
Russian buyers in the past few weeks.
According to government data, Armenia’s exports to Russia almost tripled in 2022
and nearly quadrupled in January-April 2023. Goods manufactured in third
countries and re-exported by Armenian firms are believed to have accounted for
most of that gain. They include consumer electronics and other hi-tech goods and
components which the Western powers believe could be used by the Russian defense
industry.
The increased trade with and other cash flows from Russia are the main reason
why the Armenian economy grew by 12 percent in 2022.
Yerevan To Continue Talks With Baku After Deadly ‘Provocation’
• Ruzanna Stepanian
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov start a new round of
talks in Arlington, Virginia, June 27, 2023.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday effectively dismissed
Nagorno-Karabakh leaders’ call to halt Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks made
after four Karabakh soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani forces early on
Wednesday.
In a statement adopted later on Wednesday, the Karabakh parliament said Yerevan
must refuse to negotiate until Baku ends truce violations along the Karabakh
“line of contact” and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. It warned that failure to
do so “would mean the encouragement of the Azerbaijani side’s aggressive
behavior.”
Pashinian said that the soldiers’ deaths were the result of Baku’s pre-planned
“military provocation” aimed at undermining his administration’s “efforts to
establish peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and address the issue of the
Nagorno-Karabakh people’s rights and security.” He noted in this regard that the
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers are continuing their latest round of
U.S.-mediated negotiations that began outside Washington on Tuesday.
“There is no alternative to peace in our region, and our government, faced with
all difficulties and complications, will continue the political path of peace,”
Pashinian added at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
A U.S. State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said late on Wednesday that
there is “no change in the schedule” of the Washington talks that are due to be
wrapped up on Thursday evening.
“We are deeply disturbed by the loss of life in Nagorno-Karabakh, and we offer
our condolences to the families of all of those who were killed,” Patel told
reporters. “These latest incidents underscore the need to refrain from
hostilities and for a durable and dignified peace.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani
counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov held a trilateral meeting with Jake Sullivan, the
U.S. national security adviser, at the White House. Sullivan said he urged Baku
and Yerevan to “continue making progress toward peace, as well as to avoid
provocations and de-escalate tensions in order to build confidence.”
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Mirzoyan told Sullivan that
Azerbaijani artillery and drone attacks that left the four Karabakh soldiers
dead are part of continuing Azerbaijani efforts to “subject Nagorno-Karabakh to
ethnic cleansing.” Pashinian likewise accused Baku of pursuing a “consistent
policy” of depopulating the Armenian-populated region.
Pashinian drew strong condemnation from the Karabakh leaders and the Armenian
opposition after he pledged in May to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over
Karabakh through an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty discussed during the
ongoing peace talks. His critics maintain that the Karabakh Armenians cannot
live safely under Azerbaijani rule and would inevitably leave their homeland in
that case.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.