Thursday, August 3, 2023
Armenia Sticks To Preconditions For CSTO Mission
Armenia - The building of the Armenian Foreign Ministry in Yerevan.
Armenia effectively dismissed on Thursday Russia’s latest calls to drop its
preconditions for the deployment of Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) monitors to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Russia and other CSTO member states first proposed such a deployment during a
summit in Yerevan last November. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian turned down the
offer on the grounds that they refused to condemn Azerbaijan’s offensive
military operations along the border carried out in September 2022. He gave the
same reason for refusing “military-technical assistance” offered by Armenia’s
CSTO allies.
Pashinian and other Armenian officials have repeatedly said since then that the
Russian-led military alliance must condemn the Azerbaijani “aggression” before
it can launch the monitoring mission.
“The position of the Armenian side regarding the deployment of the CSTO
monitoring mission on the international border of Armenia and Azerbaijan has
been presented and voiced in different formats and there is no change in this
matter at the moment,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian,
told Radar.am.
Armenia - CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas (right) visits the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border, September 22, 2022.
Badalian made this clear one day after a senior Russian Foreign Ministry
official, Mikael Agasandian, said the CSTO is ready to revisit the issue and
“use the organization’s broad capabilities with the maximum benefit for our
Armenian friends.”
“We continue to expect a positive response from Yerevan and are ready to resume
substantive work on the proposal to deploy a CSTO monitoring mission in the
border regions of Armenia as well as other joint measures to help our ally,” he
told the RIA Novosti news agency.
Agasandian claimed in this regard that the West is trying to end Russian
presence in the South Caucasus through “economic and political pressure” exerted
on Armenia.
“In order to achieve this objective, they are trying to undermine the existing
mechanisms of regional security, including those based on the CSTO capabilities.
We hope that Yerevan understands this well,” warned the ethnic Armenian diplomat.
Russian officials have chided Yerevan for agreeing to a similar monitoring
mission launched by the European Union in February. They claim that the
deployment is part of the U.S. and European Union efforts to drive Russia out of
the region.
Armenia - European Union monitors patrol Armenia's border with Azerbaijan.
Early this year, the Armenian government also cancelled a CSTO military exercise
planned in Armenia and refused to appoint a deputy secretary-general of the
military alliance. Pashinian said afterwards that he will pull his country out
of the alliance “if we conclude that the CSTO has left Armenia.” The Russian
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, scoffed at his remarks and warned
of their potentially “dangerous” consequences.
Armenia’s estrangement from the bloc comprising Russia and five other ex-Soviet
states is part of a broader rift between Moscow and Yerevan. On Wednesday,
Zakharova lambasted Pashinian for questioning the continued presence of Russian
peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and claiming that Moscow has scaled back its
involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks because of the war in Ukraine.
For his part, Pashinian said on Thursday that the peacekeepers must “clarify”
why a food aid convoy sent by the Armenian government last week is still unable
to reach Karabakh through Lachin corridor. He pointed to Baku’s claims that it
is not blocking traffic through the corridor.
Another Diaspora Activist Denied Entry To Armenia
• Narine Ghalechian
Armenia - Armenian-American activist Areni Margossian airs a video message from
Zvartnots airport, Yerevan, August 2, 2023.
Armenia’s government has barred yet another Diaspora-based activist of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) from entering the country,
again drawing strong condemnation from the opposition party.
U.S. citizen Areni Margossian was deported back to Lebanon on Thursday one day
after arriving at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on a flight from Beirut. In a live
video aired from Zvartnots, she said immigration officers there took away her
passport and refused to explain why she is not allowed to enter the country.
The National Security Service (NSS), which is in charge of border control, also
did not provide such an explanation to the office of Armenia’s human rights
defender. The office said it was only told that Margossian’s “entry to Armenia
is prohibited.”
Kristine Vartanian, a Dashnaktsutyun member of the Armenian parliament who
visited the airport in a bid to prevent her deportation, said the
Armenian-American woman was denied entry because of being affiliated with the
pan-Armenian party highly critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Margossian
has attended anti-Pashinian protests and “not shied away from expressing her
views about those in power in Armenia,” the lawmaker said.
France - President Emmanuel Macron, Mourad Papazian (right) and other
French-Armenian leaders visit the Armenian genocide memorial, Paris.
Margossian defended her participation in the protests staged outside the
Armenian Embassy in Washington and elsewhere in the United States. “We are
fighting so that Armenia doesn’t hand over Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to the
enemy,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“I don’t know why they think that we are dangerous people,” she said. “We only
hold demonstrations and don’t harm anyone.”
Margossian is the sixth Dashnaktsutyun member known to have been banned from
visiting their ancestral homeland over the past year. The other blacklisted
members include Mourad Papazian, one of the leaders of France’s influential
Armenian community.
Dashnaktsutyun, which is a key member of the main opposition Hayastan alliance,
has accused Pashinian of ordering the travel bans to try to silence his vocal
critics in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora.
“It’s absurd that we see this precedent under a government that talks the most
about democracy,” said Vartanian.
Under Armenian law, foreign nationals can be banned from visiting Armenia if
they pose a threat to its “state security” and “constitutional order” or plan to
carry out terrorist attacks there.
Yerevan Again Warns Of Azeri Territorial Claims
TURKMENISTAN - Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijan's
President Ilham Aliyev attend a Commonwealth of Independent States summit in
Ashgabat, October 11, 2019.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian suggested on Thursday that Azerbaijan is seeking
to sign the kind of peace deal with Armenia that would not prevent it from
laying claim to Armenian territory.
Pashinian pointed to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s comments made in an
interview with the Euronews TV channel broadcast earlier this week.
“While claiming that Azerbaijan has no territorial claims to Armenia, the
Azerbaijani president says that the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan have
not been determined,” he said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting in
Yerevan. “The borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan were decided in 1991 by the
Almaty Declaration [of former Soviet republics] and that was reaffirmed on
October 6, 2022 as a result of the quadrilateral meeting in Prague during which
the Almaty Declaration was adopted as the basis for the delimitation and
demarcation of the borders between the two countries.”
“It looks like Azerbaijan's plan is as follows: to sign a peace treaty with
clauses that leave room for disputing the Armenian-Azerbaijani border fixed by
the Almaty Declaration and to make territorial claims to Armenia later on,
during the delimitation and demarcation process,” added Pashinian.
Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian likewise complained last week that
Azerbaijan remains reluctant to recognize Armenia’s borders. This is one of the
main obstacles to the signing of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty currently
discussed by the two sides, Kostanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
This is why, he said, Yerevan insists that 1975 Soviet military maps be used for
delimiting the long Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Baku has rejected the proposed
mechanism in delimitation talks held so far.
The most recent round of those talks took place on July 12 three days before the
European Union chief, Charles Michel, hosted yet another meeting of Pashinian
and Aliyev in Brussels. Michel said after the meeting that the two leaders
reaffirmed their earlier “understanding that Armenia’s territory covers 29,800
square kilometers and Azerbaijan’s 86,600 square kilometers.” Aliyev has still
not publicly confirmed that.
“We expect Azerbaijan to publicly reaffirm that understanding,” Pashinian said
on Thursday. He insisted that despite Aliyev’s stance the two South Caucasus
states “do have a chance to achieve long-term, stable and lasting peace.”
Opposition leaders and other critics of the Armenian government note that Baku
is unwilling to reciprocate Pashinian’s recent pledge to recognize Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh through the peace deal. This means, they say,
that even such a far-reaching concession made by him would not safeguard
Armenian territory from future Azerbaijani attacks.
Following Pashinian’s pledge, Azerbaijan also tightened its crippling blockade
of Karabakh’s only land link with Armenia.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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