Friday,
Armenian PM Says ‘State Interests’ Will Matter In Decision On CSTO Membership
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (file photo)
Armenia will decide on whether to quit the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) or not “based on its own state interests,” Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian said on Friday, answering a question from the public on why
Yerevan still continues to be a member of the Russia-led defense bloc.
“We will focus on the state interests of Armenia, and if we have made or haven’t
made any decision at this moment, our benchmark is the state interest of
Armenia,” he said during almost a nine-hour-long live question-and-answer TV
broadcast.
“At the moment, our records show that the CSTO’s de-facto actions or inaction do
not address its obligations towards the Republic of Armenia, that is, in this
sense, the CSTO’s actions are not in line with Armenia’s interests. And we raise
this issue in a transparent way,” Pashinian added.
The Pashinian government has long criticized the CSTO for its “failure to
respond to the security challenges” facing Armenia.
Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022
following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said
stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.
The Russia-led bloc stopped short of calling Azerbaijan the aggressor and
effectively refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider only
sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.
Armenia later declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried
out the CSTO needed to give a clear political assessment of what Yerevan had
described as Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian
territory.
Speculation about Armenia’s possible withdrawal from the CSTO was stoked by
Pashinian’s most recent decision not to attend the organization’s November 23
summit in Minsk, Belarus, which drew criticism from Moscow.
Political analyst Areg Kochinian said Pashinian’s step and his remarks on Friday
were not yet “withdrawal” from the CSTO, but rather a preparation for it.
“One should not overestimate this boycott like some do in the media, calling it
an effective withdrawal from the CSTO. But, of course, this is essentially the
way towards change, the way of preparation for making some qualitative changes
in the security architecture of Armenia to quit the CSTO,” the analyst said.
Nagorno-Karabakh Leader Testifies In 2020 War Probe
Leader of Nagorno-Karabakh Samvel Shahramanian (file photo)
Samvel Shahramanian, the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, testified in front of an
Armenian parliament commission probing the 2020 war that met on Friday behind
closed doors to hear the unrecognized republic’s last president.
Andranik Kocharian, the head of the commission, said that, among other things,
during his three-hour-long testimony Shahramanian also shed light on some of the
events that followed Azerbaijan’s latest military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh
on September 19-20 that led to the exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians, the
region’s virtually entire Armenian population, to Armenia.
Shahramanian, who was elected president by Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament on
September 9, only ten days before Azerbaijan’s offensive, signed a decree on
September 28 disbanding the “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” from January 1, 2024,
which he later hinted was done under pressure from Azerbaijan to allow a safe
escape for the local ethnic Armenian population to Armenia.
Andranik Kocharian
Kocharian said that Shahramanian was also asked about he managed to safely reach
Armenia on board a helicopter while Nagorno-Karabakh’s eight former and current
officials, including three former presidents, were arrested by Azerbaijan and
now face grave charges in Baku.
Among the questions were also those about the fuel depot explosion on September
25 as a result of which hundreds of people were killed and injured.
“Some realities were revealed to me that no one would have been entitled to
receive information about on another platform,” said the head of the commission
that is due to complete its investigation on December 3.
Kocharian said that Shahramanian’s testimony will be reflected in the final
conclusions of the commission to be presented in a report due next year.
Kocharian said that before completing its work the commission also expects to
question one of Nagorno-Karabakh’s former military commanders who was in charge
of the Hadrut unit. He said that former Secretary of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Security
Council Samvel Babayan has himself expressed a desire to testify before the
commission.
Kocharian said that there was a legal obstacle to questioning Jalal Harutiunian,
who led the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army during most of the 2020 war, as he is
now facing criminal charges as part of a war-related investigation.
Journalists did not have an opportunity to ask questions to Shahramanian, who
had entered the investigative commission room unnoticed and almost unnoticed
left after the meeting ended.
Armenia Eyes Debt Reduction After Paying Russia For Undelivered Weapons
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian answers questions sent in by the public,
.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Yerevan was looking for options to
reduce its outstanding financial debt to Russia by using the payments it has
made for weapons that Moscow has failed to deliver.
Pashinian made the remarks on November 24 during a live question-and-answer TV
broadcast with the public when he was asked about weapons that Armenia had
purchased from Russia but that were never delivered.
Earlier, Pashinian and other Armenian officials talked about “hundreds of
millions of dollars” transferred to Moscow as part of arms purchase contracts
that remained unfulfilled amid Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine.
One citizen asked Pashinian why his government would not consider the reversal
of a controversial deal that Russia made with Armenia in the early 2000s to take
possession of some of Armenia’s lucrative strategic assets in exchange for the
South Caucasus nation’s debt.
The Armenian premier gave no figures, but again confirmed that there were
problems with Russia’s fulfilling its arms contracts with Armenia.
He said reducing Armenia’s debt to Russia could be one of the mechanisms of
settling the issue, but said there were other options as well.
“We know that Russia itself needs weapons. In this context, we expect to settle
this issue in a routine working manner. I hope that our discussions will lead to
concrete results,” Pashinian said.
Armenia has long been a close ally of Russia but – angered in part by what it
saw as a lack of support from Moscow during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and
subsequent border clashes with Azerbaijan – has in recent months taken steps to
distance itself from that alliance.
Armenia drew criticism from Moscow earlier this month after Pashinian said he
would not attend the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
in Minsk, Belarus.
Other Armenian officials also declined to participate in events held by the
CSTO, which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, but a
senior official in Yerevan on November 23 said Armenia nevertheless is not
considering quitting the CSTO.
Armenia Says Azerbaijan Still Vague On Commitment To Peace
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian answers questions sent in by the public,
.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Friday that it still remains unclear
whether Azerbaijan will ultimately commit to signing a peace agreement with
Armenia based on the three principles that he said were agreed upon during
negotiations mediated by the European Union.
Answering questions sent in by the public during a live TV broadcast, Pashinian
referred to his meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that were held
with the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel in May and July.
The Armenian premier reiterated the three principles, including mutual
recognition of territorial integrity and borders, border delimitation based on a
1991 declaration signed by a dozen former Soviet republics, including Armenia
and Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the USSR, and the sovereign jurisdictions
of the states over transportation links passing through their territories.
“Now we cannot say with certainty that Azerbaijan refuses to sign a peace
agreement based on these three principles, but we cannot say with certainty that
Azerbaijan reaffirms its commitment to these three principles either. There is a
need to clarify these issues and nuances during the negotiations,” Pashinian.
Azerbaijan appears to have avoided Western platforms for negotiations with
Armenia after Azerbaijani forces recaptured the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh in a
one-day military operation on September 19, causing more than 100,000 people,
virtually the entire local Armenian population, to flee to Armenia.
Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev were scheduled to meet on the
sidelines of the EU’s October 5 summit in Granada, Spain, for talks mediated by
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European
Council President Charles Michel.
European Council President Charles Michel hosts talks between Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels, May
14, 2023.
Pashinian had hoped that they would sign there a document laying out the main
parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. However, Aliyev withdrew
from the talks at the last minute.
Baku cited France’s allegedly “biased position” against Azerbaijan as the reason
for skipping those talks in Spain.
The Azerbaijani leader also appears to have canceled another meeting which the
EU’s Michel planned to host in Brussels in late October.
Most recently Azerbaijan refused to attend a meeting with Armenia at the level
of foreign ministers in Washington after allegedly “one-sided and biased”
remarks by a senior U.S. official made during a congressional hearing on
Nagorno-Karabakh. That meeting had reportedly been scheduled to take place on
November 20.
In doing so Azerbaijan recently offered to hold direct talks with Armenia,
including at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Pashinian reaffirmed today that a meeting of the two countries’ officials
engaged in border delimitation and demarcation activities will be held at a yet
undisclosed location along the state frontier on November 30.
He said that Yerevan will draw conclusions from those discussions as to whether
“Azerbaijan is ready for peace based on those principles or whether Azerbaijan
rejects those principles.”
“We don’t have that confidence until today,” Pashinian said.
The Armenian leader did not say whether Yerevan also considers direct
negotiations with Azerbaijan at the highest level.
On Thursday, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian said that
there are issues in negotiations “where the presence of mediators is mandatory
and plays a very important role.”
“For example, issues related to the rights of the population forcibly displaced
from Nagorno-Karabakh. The existence of international mechanisms is important
here. There are also other issues where guarantees are important,” the senior
Armenian diplomat said.
Armenia’s former President Serzh Sarkisian, meanwhile, warned that Yerevan
should not engage in direct talks with Baku. He said such a format will deadlock
the negotiation process.
Former Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian
He also warned that a peace agreement foisted on Armenia will also amount to a
“surrender.”
Sarkisian claimed that if Pashinian is going to sign a peace agreement with
Azerbaijan the way “as we see it now,” it will make him a “double capitulant”
after the “surrender” that the ex-president alleged Pashinian signed in 2020 to
stop the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Because unjust peace is a reason for a new war,” Sarkisian said.
Pashinian and members of his political team routinely deny that the
Russia-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan amounted to a
surrender. They, in turn, accuse Sarkisian and his predecessor Robert Kocharian
of being the ones who paved the way for the military defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh
by leaving a legacy of conflict and a “corruption-stricken” army and state to
their government.
Armenia ‘To Consider’ Joining Documents Adopted By CSTO Summit It Skipped
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (second from right) posing for a family photo
with leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization during a summit not
attended by Armenia. Minsk, Belarus, .
Armenia will consider whether to accede to the documents adopted as a result of
the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit that it did not
attend, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Yerevan said.
“We will consider the documents adopted as a result of the sessions of the CSTO
statutory bodies… and, taking into account the procedures existing within the
CSTO framework, the issue of Armenia’s accession to them,” Ani Badalian told the
news program of Armenia’s Public Television late on Thursday.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials refused to go to
Minsk to participate in the November 22-23 sessions hosted by Belarusian leader
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his government and attended by leaders and
representatives of four other former Soviet countries, including Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
According to officials in Yerevan, Armenia’s absence from the summit was due to
the CSTO’s “failure to respond to the security challenges” facing the South
Caucasus nation.
Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022
following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said
stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.
The Russia-led bloc stopped short of calling Azerbaijan the aggressor and
effectively refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider only
sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.
Armenia later declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried
out the CSTO needed to give a clear political assessment of what Yerevan had
described as Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian
territory.
This week’s summit of the Russia-led defense bloc discussed “urgent problems of
international and regional security” and made a number of decisions, including
the approval of a new provision on the order of response of the CSTO to crisis
situations and on the order of adoption and implementation of collective
decisions on the use of forces.
The summit also approved the appointment of Russian Colonel General Andrei
Serdyukov to the post of the head of the Joint Staff of the CSTO and a
regulation on the joint press center of the CSTO.
Belarusian Foreign Minister Syarhey Aleynyk acknowledged before the leaders of
Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan gathered for the summit
that Armenia’s absence meant the lack of a quorum, but he told journalists that
all the decisions approved would be “absolutely legitimate.”
Aleynyk said he had discussed “issues and mechanisms for approving decisions”
with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan in a phone call. The Belarusian
minister said that according to the CSTO rules, all decisions are made in
consultation with all countries.
“We agreed that after the summit, the secretary-general of the CSTO will visit
Yerevan. And, of course, we will pass all the decisions that were finalized here
as part of the conciliation commission to our Armenian partners. And we will
count on them to join us,” Aleynyk said.
Private Remittances To Armenia Dwindle In 2023
• Robert Zargarian
The net amount of private remittances entering Armenia has decreased by more
than 20 percent, standing at some $1.3 billion in the first nine months of this
year, the latest statistical data shows.
In January-September 2022, the net inflow of money to Armenia was about $1.8
billion.
According to experts, this decline shows that the positive influence of the
influx of Russians and their money on the economy of Armenia after Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is weakening.
“Demand-driven economic growth was also at the expense of the tripling of
remittances, but this has become less of a factor, and, unfortunately,
predictions about that are coming true and now the opposite is happening,” said
Tadevos Avetisian, a member of the opposition Hayastan faction in the Armenian
parliament.
Avetisian also said last year that those flows had external reasons and were not
the result of the government’s activities, a view not entirely shared by
Armenian officials.
According to the economist, the money that rapidly flow in also tend to rapidly
flow out. “Now we are already at this stage, and this outflow of money puts
stress on the economic processes as well,” he said.
According to the data of the Central Bank, money inflows to Armenia increased
significantly in April 2022, some two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
that triggered a war that still continues between the two countries today.
It was during that period that the influx of Russians fleeing Western sanctions,
reprisals or later the military draft began.
The net amount of private remittances to Armenia was steadily increasing for a
year, but began to show an opposite trend since March of this year when more
money started to flow out of Armenia.
And although the amount of money sent from abroad continues to be relatively
large, the amount of funds leaving Armenia has increased significantly. Of the
nearly $4,3 million that entered Armenia in the form of private remittances in
January-September 2023, some $3 billion have already left. In the same period of
2022, almost twice less, $1.7 billion, left Armenia.
According to Avetisian, last year’s large cash inflow was mostly not capitalized
in Armenia, the money was not turned into investments and remained on bank
accounts. Now, he said, this money is leaving.
“To put it figuratively, that money came to Armenia and hid here for a while,
and now it is leaving Armenia due to new geopolitical realities. In other words,
the hot money effect is when people withdraw their capitals from a country where
there is a possibility of a military conflict,” the economist said.
Statistics shows that the lion’s share of the outflow of money from Armenia goes
to Russia and the United States. This year people in Armenia have already wired
half a billion dollars in private remittances to Russia, almost twice as much as
in the same period of 2022. A total of $323 million was transferred to the
United States during nine months, which is by nearly 60 percent more than last
year.
According to economist Suren Parsian, in order to keep the money in Armenia,
first a favorable investment environment should be created to attract those who
have money so that they do not look for options in other countries.
“We must have a developed stock exchange where people can, for example, buy
shares, bonds, and also have the opportunity to start a business in Armenia.
There should be such an environment so that they can implement their ideas and
projects here,” Parsian said.
Acknowledging external factors behind the influx of money into Armenia in 2022,
the Armenian government has not shared the opposition’s view that it was
entirely due to those factors that people came and brought their money to the
country. Officials have pointed to efforts of the Armenian government to create
an appropriate climate and business opportunities in Armenia.
At a weekly cabinet session on Thursday Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
touted his government’s success in setting a new record in terms of registered
jobs in the country.
Pashinian said that around 183,000 new jobs have been created in Armenia, a
country with a population of some 3 million people, since he first became prime
minister in May 2018. The current number of registered jobs in Armenia, he said,
stands at 730,000.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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