16:42,
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Drug addicts, dealers and homeless who have plagued San Francisco’s downtown have miraculously disappeared this week as the city cleans up for a huge international event, reports the New York Post.
The homeless have been pushed to other parts of the city in preparation for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which starts tomorrow and runs through Nov. 17, reports the Post.
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup intentionally discriminated against Armenian Americans when they applied for credit cards, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday, as some bank employees argued internally that Armenians were more likely to commit fraud and referred to applicants as “bad guys” or affiliated with organized crime.
The CFPB found that Citi employees were trained to avoid approving applications with last names ending in “yan” or “ian” — the most common suffix to Armenian last names — as well applications that originated in Glendale, California, where roughly 15% of the country’s Armenian American population lives.
As part of the order, Citi will pay $24.5 million in fines as well as $1.4 million in remedies to impacted customers.
The origins of the case come as a result of some organized crime syndicates operating in Southern California that involve Armenian Americans. The leaders of the Armenian crime rings have been charged with identity theft and other financial crimes, including stealing COVID-19 financial relief funds in recent years.
Citi, based in New York, said a few employees were attempting to stop potential fraud due to this “well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California.” However, in the bureau’s order, these Citi employees used identifiable information that broadly discriminated against Armenian Americans in general.
“We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly by the small number of employees who circumvented our fraud detection protocols,” the bank said in a statement. “Following an internal investigation, we have taken appropriate actions with those directly involved in this matter and we promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct.”
In its investigation, the bureau found that Citi employees were instructed to single out applications that had Armenian last names, but then to conceal the real reason on why those applications were denied. These employees knew they were running afoul of bank laws that prohibit discrimination against national origin, and kept any decisions off recorded phone lines or writing it down.
“Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud. In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination,” said Rohit Chopra, the director of the CFPB, in a statement.
CFPB officials said the case involves “hundreds of individuals” who were impacted by Citi’s discrimination, which is relatively small for a bank that has tens of millions of customers. However because the behavior was so egregious, the bureau’s fine against Citi is relatively high compared to the number of people impacted.
https://apnews.com/article/citi-citigroup-cfpb-armenia-armenianamericans-606c86b08f8f571b643f0edd12137f6b
By Emily Flitter
Nov. 8, 2023, 11:33 a.m. ET
Citigroup employees labeled a group of roughly 80,000 Armenian-Americans living near Los Angeles — the largest Armenian community outside Yerevan, the Armenian capital — as “bad guys” and secretly denied them fair access to the bank’s credit card products, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a statement on Wednesday.
The bank has agreed to pay $25.9 million to settle a case brought by the consumer bureau under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the federal law that prohibits banks from discriminating against people based on a host of qualities, including race, national origin and religion. Of the total, $1.4 million will go to the victims of Citigroup’s discriminatory practices, the regulator said. The other $24.5 million is a penalty for the bank’s misconduct.
“Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud,” Rohit Chopra, the director of the consumer bureau, said in a news conference on Wednesday. “In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.”
Mr. Chopra said that Citigroup had been caught violating bank regulations on several occasions. The consumer regulator said Citigroup’s discriminatory practices regarding Armenians were in place from at least 2015 to 2021. “I am concerned about Citi’s longstanding problems when it comes to managing the many parts of its sprawling business,” Mr. Chopra said.
According to the regulator, Citi employees pegged the community, in Glendale, Calif., as a group whose members were likely to rack up huge debts and then flee the country. They warned new hires not to give credit card applicants with Armenian-sounding last names that ended in “ian” or “yan” the same rates that other customers received, and in some cases urged them to reject these applicants altogether.
The people affected by the bank’s practice were not applying for Citigroup-branded cards; they were seeking cards offered by retailers, like Home Depot and Best Buy, that were underwritten by the bank. Eric Halperin, the consumer bureau’s enforcement director, said during the news conference that Citigroup was still trying to identify how many people were affected by the discrimination, but so far regulators had identified “hundreds.”
Karen Kearns, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said in a statement that the bank had been “trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California,” and that “a few employees took impermissible actions.”
According to regulators, Citi managers knew excluding Armenians was illegal and warned employees “not to discuss it in writing or on recorded phone lines.” Even so, regulators found evidence of Citi employees discussing over email how to cover up their denial of applicants from Glendale.
“It’s been a while since I declined for possible credit abuse/YAN — gimme some reasons I can use,” one employee wrote to another in 2016, seeking advice on how to tell a potential customer that a credit card application had been denied without revealing the real reason, according to the consumer bureau.
“We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly,” Ms. Kearns said. “Following an internal investigation, we have taken appropriate actions with those directly involved in this matter, and we promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct.”
Emily Flitter covers finance. She is the author of “The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America.” More about Emily Flitter
Over the past week Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and other Armenian officials have been hinting that a peace deal with Azerbaijan could be imminent.
They say the sides have reached agreement on three core principles of a deal while "details" remain to be settled.
Pashinyan told parliament on October 30 that a peace deal is "realistic" if the sides remain faithful to the principles of mutual recognition of territorial integrity, delimitation/demarcation of the shared border based on the 1991 Almaty declaration and the opening of transport links in a way that respects the two countries' sovereignty and customs laws.
Later, ruling party MP Gevorg Papoyan echoed the prime minister, saying that only the "details" of the agreement are left to be hammered out.
Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, Elnur Mammadov, confirmed that "most points" of the peace agreement had been agreed with Yerevan. Mammadov said that reaching a deal had become "easier" thanks to Azerbaijan's takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh after its September 19-20 lightning offensive.
Following that offensive, several planned meetings between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders failed to take place in a reflection of the sides' differing preferences on who should mediate.
Baku refused to take part in EU-led peace talks in Granada, Spain and in Brussels, while Armenia's prime minister was a no-show at a CIS summit in Bishkek where he'd been expected to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Armenia was represented at a meeting in Tehran on October 23 that involved Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan.
Armenia's lack of interest in Moscow-brokered peace talks comes as the country looks to the West for new strategic and security allies, signing an arms deal with France and intensifying diplomatic relations with a number of Western states.
Prior to Azerbaijan's September offensive, which triggered the exodus of the region's entire Armenian population, the Karabakh Armenians' fate had been the thorniest issue in the talks. Baku had rejected the prospect of granting the region autonomous status, as well as Yerevan's calls for an international mechanism that would ensure the Karabakh Armenians' rights and securities under Azerbaijani rule.
During Azerbaijan's attack on Karabakh on September 19, Pashinyan announced that Armenia's priority was to ensure that Karabakh Armenians could remain in the region and live a "dignified" life there. But now that it has been emptied of Armenians, Yerevan seems to have abandoned this demand and instead started the process of granting them refugee status or Armenian citizenship.
"Our policy is that if those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh do not, objectively speaking, have the opportunity to return to Nagorno-Karabakh – our wish is that they all stay in Armenia, and live and work here," Pashinyan told a cabinet meeting on November 2.
Another critical issue is "the opening of transport links," a provision of the 2020 ceasefire agreement that cemented Azerbaijan's gains in the Second Karabakh War.
Baku long discussed this provision in the context of its "Zangezur corridor" project, which for a time it insisted was to be a seamless corridor connecting mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhchivan through Armenian territory and beyond Armenian sovereignty.
Azerbaijan stepped back from the maximalist version of this project in February, and, after the September offensive, began giving assurances that it would no longer insist on a corridor and would instead make do with an alternative route through Iran.
But Armenians are wary of these assurances, particularly given Russia's apparent interest in the Zangezur corridor project.
Fears persist in Armenia that Azerbaijan will use force to make the corridor a reality, and continued rhetoric from Baku about "Western Azerbaijan" is doing nothing to allay these fears. This is the notion that parts of Armenian territory rightfully belong to Azerbaijan, or that, at the very least, Azerbaijanis have the right to settle in formerly Azerbaijani-populated parts of Armenia.
These concerns are shared by the EU, which has called on Azerbaijan to commit to respecting Armenian territory and by the U.S., where, according to Politico, Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefed members of Congress in early October on the risk of an Azerbaiajni invasion of Armenia. (The State Department rejected this report.)
The Lemkin Genocide Prevention Institute issued a "red flag alert" on November 1 over a possible "invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks."
On November 2, the US State Department told the Voice of America's Armenian service: "Any violation of Armenia's territorial integrity will have serious consequences."
By Eurasianet.org
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Azerbaijan-Softens-Stance-On-Zangezur-Corridor-As-Peace-Deal-Nears.html
Every November people across Britain and the world are invited to observe “Red Wednesday”, an annual day of commemoration for the 360 million Christians estimated to be living under severe religious persecution. Armenians have often been among these millions.
Indeed, at the heart of the leafy London suburb of Ealing, a silent witness to the horrors of Armenian history now stands tall. The striking flame-shaped 6-foot monument, carved from tuff, Armenia’s national stone, was recently installed as England’s first dedicated memorial to the victims of the Genocide against its people.
The genocide Armenian Christians experienced at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, which historians consider the first “modern” genocide, claimed the lives of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1916. On the instruction of Ottoman politician Talaat Pasha, Armenians were marched into the Syrian desert and brutally massacred, raped, robbed and starved.
The Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge these atrocities as anything more than an accident of war, but the historical consensus is that it was an organised, violent and deliberate attempt to eradicate this ancient Christian community, who had long faced periodic violence and systemic persecution under their Muslim rulers.
However, London’s Armenian community has been left feeling “under attack” after the monument dedicated to this brutal historic episode was vandalised following attempts by masked extremists to interrupt its unveiling ceremony.
As the 23 September inauguration ceremony unfolded, what should have been a solemn occasion quickly turned into a shocking display of hatred and attempted intimidation. A group of men arrived (pictured), some of whom had concealed their faces, waving Turkish flags and grinning as they displayed fists with the little finger and index finger raised: a “Turkic hand gesture” associated with the Grey Wolves, a proscribed terror group in several countries.
The Grey Wolves, a Turkish nationalist organisation, were behind spates of bombings and shootings throughout the 1970s, targeting not only Armenians but also Kurds and members of the opposition Democratic Peoples’ Party in Turkey. The group has displayed hostility to most non-Turkish or non-Sunni elements within Turkey and has distributed Turkish translations of Nazi literature.
In 2020, France banned the group for hate speech and political violence. In 2019 Austria outlawed its characteristic hand gesture. They are also outlawed in Kazakhstan.
Despite the group’s attempted provocation, attendees like Anna, a 13-year-old scout who spoke at the event, stood firm. “Me and my fellow scouts were hurt and shocked by the disrespect of the individuals who decided to turn up and show the sign of a Turkish extremist group,” she told me.
“These disgusting actions did not interrupt the ceremony, and we continued to proudly speak about our country, as we spoke and told the stories of our ancestors while they stood in the back. They failed to interrupt our ceremony, showing how strong us Armenians are when we are together.”
“The Grey Wolves gesture is the moral equivalent of a Nazi salute,” explained Annette Moskofian, who chairs the UK’s Armenian National Committee, a grassroots community body.
“To me personally, history is repeating itself. The idea of one nation, two states between Turkey and Azerbaijan means the Azerbaijani regime wants to finish what the Ottomans started in 1915, and that there are people in the UK who share these ideas makes us feel under attack,” she declared.
“Even in a civilised developed country like the UK, we have seen these attempts to intimidate our community, and the extremists who agree with the approach of the Turkish and Azeri governments feel able to threaten us with their hatred and racism.”
For the Armenian community in the UK, the attacks on their event and the genocide memorial itself did not feel like an isolated incident; instead they have served as a harsh reminder of the challenges their community has long faced, with little external support.
“Within 10 days of the inauguration ceremony, the memorial was desecrated by bright yellow paint, and the word Genocide on the plaque was scratched as if someone was trying to erase that specific word,” Moskofian explained. Fortunately, the memorial is under CCTV camera surveillance, and the police are actively investigating the incident as a “hate crime”. Moskofian says she is “confident that the perpetrators will be brought to justice and serve as an example”.
This disturbing display of extremism occurred at the peak of the recent crisis in Artsakh, which Baku had subjected to a harsh humanitarian blockade since last December. In September, the crisis provoked the exodus of almost all of the 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the enclave as Azeri forces launched a takeover, ending more than 1500 years of Armenian Christian presence in the small, mountainous region.
Moskofian shares a personal connection to the genocide. Her grandmother was a survivor, the sole member of a family of 100 who lived to tell the tale. “The Armenian Genocide Memorial Inauguration was a very proud moment for me as her descendant”.
“We have been keen to erect a monument to the Genocide ever since Ealing Council officially recognized it in 2010.”
“Although this was for me a token recognition until the UK joins other countries, including the US, in officially naming the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians during that period as what it was: a genocide.”
For now, a flame-shaped symbol of the eternal souls of Armenian genocide victims continues to stand in a leafy corner of London. Sadly it seems that the embers of hatred are still glowing nearby.
At the time of writing the Home Office has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding its policy towards The Grey Wolves.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/british-armenians-fear-a-repeat-of-history-as-genocide-memorial-vandalised/
Jerusalem’s Old City, which has been deserted since the Gaza War, just had its most significant explosion of anger since the recent conflict erupted.
The Old City is no stranger to tension. It is arguably the main cauldron of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
What made Sunday’s eruption different was where it took place: a normally quiet car park in the Armenian Quarter, tucked away in the south-east corner of the Old City.
On the face of it, an increasingly heated quarrel in this corner of Jerusalem is about property development. But it cuts to the heart of the agony so many communities in Israel and Palestine have experienced in more than 100 years of conflict.
The current war, the Armenians say, has focused global attention on the unbearable violence in Israel on October 7 during Hamas' surprise attack, and the subsequent massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
That crisis, in turn, has empowered radical Israeli settlers to seize more Palestinian land and intimidate communities
Armed men with guard dogs descended on part of the car park right next to a private garden over which an Armenian flag stands tall.
Hagop Djernazian, a community leader, stood in the fray surrounded by Israeli police, lawyers, clergy and large crowds of agitated residents.
“I was at home. At three o’clock I got a message that a group or armed settlers had arrived,” he said, amid the furore.
“They have pepper spray. They kicked us out of the property. When the police came we went back in. The priests arrived as did our lawyer.”
Tensions had already been high before the arrival of the armed men. The car park in which they were prowling is the centre of a bitter and murky property battle, involving a private developer’s plan to build a hotel on the site, which makes up 25 per cent of the entire quarter.
The land was sold by the Armenian Patriarch with the involvement of a now-defrocked priest who was responsible for the Patriarchate’s vast property portfolio.
“The whole thing stinks,” Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli anti-settlement activist and lawyer, told The National.
“This patch of land is strategically located. In Camp David, [Prime Minister Ehud Barak] was willing to give Palestinians the Christian and Muslim Quarter, but only half of the Armenian Quarter. Israel wanted its road, one of the only vehicular routes in the Old City” Mr Seidemann added.
“I’ve said to my friends in the international community, ignore the legalities for now. There are hundreds of members of a community confronting armed people with dogs and weapons. It’s on the brink of an explosion. The last thing we need is an eruption of convulsive violence in Jerusalem. Sort out the legal issues later – make this go away.”
The Armenian community is indeed seething. They fear the deal might spell the end of their presence in the Old City.
Without a car park, the Quarter’s already dwindling numbers would not be able to keep its institutions going, turning the area from a centre of Armenian life into a museum, they say.
Garo Ghazarian, a high-profile US-Armenian attorney and part of a group of international lawyers who have banded together to prevent the deal, summed up the stakes at the end of a fact-finding mission in June:
“The Armenian Quarter is of national and international importance for all Armenian people all over the world,” he told a packed courtyard of residents and international journalists, flanked by peers from across the Armenian diaspora.
“It is of the highest historical value and wealth to the Armenian nation. It is an integral part in the identity of the Armenian people in general. It is living proof of the centuries-old history of our people. It is testament to our great civilisation in world history.”
On October 26, the Patriarch announced that he had a sent a cancellation letter to the developers, although no one from the community has seen it.
That same day, bulldozers turned up to the site and began knocking down walls, prompting members of the community to keep watch on regular intervals.
Although they were already on alert, Sunday was different. The arrival of anonymous armed men was a significant escalation.
Mr Djernazian beckoned in rage in the direction of one particular man, Danny Rothman, a figure at the heart of the property deal about whom very little is known.
Mr Rothman declined to comment on the reason behind his surprise arrival and the current status of the wider property deal.
Perhaps worst of all, many in the community feel betrayed by their religious leadership. Many believe the Patriarch was incompetent at best for signing away the property. Others believe corruption is the reason.
The breakdown in trust is dangerous for the tiny community.
Armenians in the Holy Land, numbering only a few thousand people, are mostly the descendants of victims of the Armenian Genocide, who scattered themselves throughout the Middle East to escape the Ottoman Empire's oppression in the early 20th century.
There is also a much older religious community, whose presence for centuries makes the Armenians one of the foremost Christian denominations in Jerusalem.
Now, those two parts of the community, co-religionists in one of Israel's worst crises, are bitterly divided.
There are, however, signs things might be improving.
Many priests joined the community in the car park on Sunday, not easy given their boss started the saga. A new bishop has just arrived from Armenia to deal with the institution’s property. A number of figures in the community told The National they hold him in high regard.
The Patriarch himself even turned up, according to a press release. “The community stood strong, with 200 members in unity to prevent the takeover and save the Armenian Quarter,” it read.
On Monday, quiet had returned to the car park. Mr Djernazian stood by the rubble kicked up by the bulldozers mere days previously.
“Jerusalem has been targeted for years, but it’s important to note that people are using the war in Gaza to target Armenians when they are most likely to be alone,” he said.
“We have had a presence here since the 4th century, so we will never give up. Losing this land would mean endangering not just the Armenian presence in Jerusalem but the Christian one, too.”
Azerbaijan took care to conduct the military operations against the occupying forces of Armenia without jeopardizing the lives of the civilian population of the Karabakh region. As opposed to the Armenian side that intentionally targeted civilian areas in the Azerbaijani cities that were far from the combat zone and killed 100 civilians, Azerbaijan did not attack against the civilian population. Thanks to this humanist approach of the Azerbaijani government, there were minimal casualties amongst the Armenian civilians (60 civilians) in Karabakh during the 44 Day War. According to the expert reviews, the civilian casualty rate in this war was unprecedented (below 2 percent) which is significantly lower than other conflicts of the recent decades.
The implications of this war were multifaceted, extending their influence not only for the conflicting sides but also throughout the broader region. These consequences were not limited solely to the political or geopolitical sphere but also encompassed various other domains, including the economy, connectivity, and regional integration. Three years later, it is safe to assert that the 44 Day War has ushered in a new era for the South Caucasus.
The war shattered the long-standing impasse in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, paving the way for a comprehensive resolution.
Armenia and Azerbaijan engaged in protracted peace negotiations for nearly three decades leading up to the Second Karabakh War. This period was marked by sporadic escalations and the loss of both military personnel and, at times, civilian lives on both sides. Armenia’s strategy was straightforward: its leaders aimed to prolong the negotiations as much as possible while the separatist regime in the occupied territories solidified its control over the region and facilitated the settlement of illegal residents from Armenia and the Middle East. Concurrently, the international community failed to exert pressure on Armenia to adhere to the United Nations Security Council resolutions from 1993, which called for the immediate withdrawal of occupying forces from Azerbaijani territories. Acknowledging the erosion of the negotiation process, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan publicly criticized the international mediators and condemned Armenia’s destructive approaches on July 6, 2020, declaring that the peace process had become “meaningless.”
The 44 Day War broke the impasse in the process but fell short of producing full resolutions. Armenia refused to implement the critical provisions of the trilateral [Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia] statement signed on November 10, 2020 that ended the war. Most importantly, Yerevan rejected the Azerbaijani demands to withdraw its armed forces from the territories of Azerbaijan where Russia’s peacekeeping mission was deployed in accordance with the trilateral statement. Armed Forces of Armenia, together with the illegal units of the local separatist regime in Russia’s peacekeeping zone, posed military threats to Azerbaijan’s national security. The problem remained even after Yerevan officially admitted the presence of its troops on the Azerbaijani soil in July 2022 and pledged to withdraw them. At the same time, the leaders of the separatist entity in Karabakh ignored Azerbaijan’s calls for peaceful reintegration of the Armenian residents in Karabakh to Azerbaijan’s constitutional framework.
This process was negatively affected by biased policies of the French government and some other political circles in the West who indirectly emboldened the separatist leaders and encouraged them into uncompromising position against Azerbaijan.
This situation led to a deterioration of relations, even though Yerevan officially acknowledged Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, including Karabakh, on multiple occasions after following the 44 Day War. In September 2023, Azerbaijan’s one-day anti-terror operation against the separatist regime in Karabakh marked the decisive blow for the separatist leadership. Confronted with no alternative, the separatist leaders were compelled to capitulate and fully accept Azerbaijan’s conditions.
The operations resulted with the mass exodus of the local Armenian population from the Karabakh region. International organizations, including the United Nations that sent an observer mission to Karabakh in the aftermath of the anti-terror operations in September, dispelled the claims regarding the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. Armenians who fled Karabakh reported no coercion or maltreatment. They acknowledged that it was their own leaders who instructed them to leave Karabakh after the region came under control of the Azerbaijani side. Nevertheless, Baku has launched various reintegration projects to bring back the Armenian people and offered them Azerbaijani citizenship, social benefits, and other rights.
Thus, the collapse of the separatist regime in Karabakh marked the conclusive end of the so-called “Nagorno-Karabakh” project, initially established in 1923 by the Soviet government as a tool to exert pressure on Azerbaijan and utilized by Armenia to carve up a part of Azerbaijani lands.
The war opened up opportunities for regional integration.
The territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the occupied territories of the latter posed a significant obstacle to the rapid economic progress of both nations and also hindered regional economic and political integration in the South Caucasus. Over the past three decades, since the re-establishment of independent statehood in the early 1990s, the region missed out on numerous opportunities. The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict destabilized regional peace and security, generated unnecessary additional expenses for various regional economic initiatives, presented challenges to the transformation of the entire South Caucasus into a key transportation hub for the broader region, and discouraged investments from flowing into the area. As a result, the South Caucasus has not fully realized its economic development potential and connectivity projects over the past thirty years.
The trilateral statement signed on November 10 by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia was not a mere ceasefire agreement; it went beyond that by providing a framework for the region’s post-war development. Notably, the 9th article of the statement focused on the re-establishment of regional transportation and communication links, which had been closed off since the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s. This article stipulated the full restoration of these links, including the establishment of a transportation corridor that would enable unobstructed movement between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik region, also known as the Zangezur corridor.
In a similar way to the negotiations over the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from Karabakh, Armenia refused to honor its commitments under the trilateral statement of November 10, 2020. Therefore, the talks over the Zangezur corridor have yet to deliver practical results. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has succeeded to obtain an alternative to this corridor via the Iran territory and hence lost interest in the trans-Armenia passage. Nevertheless, we can assume that the Zangezur corridor will be opened soon as it is beneficial to Yerevan and it will help Armenia to overcome self-isolation in the region and integrate into regional transportation networks. Notably, this road has been included in the “Crossroads for Peace” project announced by the Armenian government in October 2023, which envisions more integrated connectivity channels in the South Caucasus with Armenia part of it.
The resolution of the conflict created a good chance also for the regional integration both within the region amongst the three countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) and around the region together with Russia, Iran, and Turkiye. It is important to note that there were meetings amongst the high-level representatives of those countries on both tracks in October, a month after the collapse of the separatist regime in Karabakh. These developments take place in parallel with the intensification of peace treaty talks between Baku and Yerevan.
That said, the resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict has been a historic movement for the South Caucasus and brought about various opportunities that is set to contribute to peace and stability in the South Caucasus. It is therefore high moment for the international community, including the European Union and the United States, to support the peace and regional integration efforts in the region. The South Caucasus cannot afford to miss the present opportunity.
14:58, 8 November 2023
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Greek Diplomatic Life magazine’s October edition features an article on an event celebrating Armenia’s 32nd anniversary of independence and the 30th anniversary of the reciprocal opening of diplomatic representations in both countries.
The magazine’s October edition also features an interview with Armenian Ambassador to Greece Tigran Mkrtchyan.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
MARKING OF 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MUTUAL OPENING OF EMBASSIES AND THE 32ND ANNIVERSARY OF INDEPENDENCE, THE MAIN MESSAGES:
Greece was one of the first countries to recognize the independence of Armenia, which was followed by the establishment of diplomatic relations. This year we are marking the 30th Anniversary of the opening of diplomatic representations, both in Yerevan and Athens. It is unnecessary to mention that the relations between Greek and Armenian peoples have a history not of decades, but of millennia, during which the strong friendly ties, common values, and approaches formed a solid foundation for the development of interstate relations.
In the early 19th Century, the Greek revolutionaries who were fighting for their independence from the Ottoman yoke also mentioned the Armenians as their fellow brothers in pursuing the same goal. The Genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians of 1915-1916 and the Smyrna Catastrophe was another stage in our shared pain and standing by one another. The Armenian community here was officially established immediately after Smyrna in 1922 as several thousands of Armenians found safe haven in Greece, although some of our Armenian communities in Northern Greece and the island of Crete have a continuous presence in the region that impressively exceeds five centuries.
The young state of Armenia has always felt the support of Greece, both in terms of effective bilateral cooperation and in terms of the support shown to Armenia at international platforms. Today, Greece is one of Armenia’s most important partners in Europe and the world. Taking this opportunity, I would like to emphasize that we, Armenians, will never forget the sincere support of the Greek people and the Government of Greece during the most difficult periods of our nation’s history, the most recent example of which was the war of 2020 and the following developments in Nagorno-Karabakh.
POTENTIAL FOR DEEPENING BILATERAL RELATIONS, FIELDS OF COOPERATION:
There is an active political dialogue. A few days ago in Granada, within the framework of the summit of the European Communities, the Prime Ministers of Armenia and Greece, Nikol Pashinyan and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had a meeting (the third meeting over the last four years), during which the latter expressed his support to and solidarity with Armenia in face of the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno- Karabakh and threats to Armenian territorial integrity by Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The meeting of our foreign ministers also took place within the framework of the 78th session of the General Assembly. In addition, Ministers Mirzoyan and Gerapetritis had two telephone conversations in recent months. In general, on the Foreign Ministerial level, there has been active cooperation and several mutual visits.
Taking into account the intensity of political dialogue and the content of multisectoral cooperation, I think it is time to consider the possibility of bringing the Armenia-Greece cooperation to a much higher, strategic level, which, I believe, will happen sooner than later.
PROSPECTS FOR TRILATERAL COOPERATION:
Of course, the tripartite format of cooperation, which is based on the commitment of the parties to common values, readiness to develop neighborly relations based on the principles of International Law, has a much greater potential for development. In the near future, we look forward to hosting a tripartite summit at the level of heads of state in Yerevan, which, I am sure, will set new targets for cooperation.
POTENTIAL FOR ECONOMIC RELATIONS:
Currently, efforts are being made to host the regular 6th session of the Intergovernmental Joint Commission on Armenian-Greek economic, industrial and scientific-technical cooperation in Yerevan in the first quarter of 2024.
If we talk about specific directions, then renewable energy is one of the promising areas of economic cooperation. Greece has made great progress, especially in the field of solar energy, this experience is very valuable for Armenia, where renewable energy is a rapidly developing field and there is a large space for investment.
Armenia also offers huge potential in several other sectors such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, textile and apparels, food and beverage and of course tourism, a field of economy in which Greece has a unique know-how. Within this context, Armenia was the ‘Honoured Country’ at last year’s Philoxenia exhibition in Thessaloniki which is considered the most important tourism event in Greece.
Another booming field is information and communication technologies which has become one of the fastest-growing industries in Armenia, with a steady annual 20% growth rate. Armenia is intending to participate for the first time in the upcoming ‘Beyond Expo’, the well-known technology exhibition and summit which will be held in Thessaloniki on April 25th.
SITUATION IN NAGORNO KARABAKH, ETHNIC CLEANSING:
As you know, back in September 2020, Azerbaijan violated one of the fundamental principles of International Law – the principle of non-use of force and unleashed a large-scale war against Nagorno-Karabakh. It was possible to stop the bloodshed with the tripartite declaration of November 2020, the purpose of which was to move the settlement process to a peaceful course.
However, Azerbaijan, not receiving proper pressure and adequate international reaction for its aggressive actions and war crimes, encouraged by impunity, first started blocking the Lachin Corridor – the only “way of life” connecting Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia in December of last year, effectively keeping the local Armenian population besieged for 11 months, and later, on September 19th-20th, initiated another military aggression against the exhausted, isolated Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
The cities and villages were criminally subjected to merciless aerial bombardment, causing more than 300 dead, more than 400 wounded and more than 1,000 missing, including a large number of civilians, including children, women and the elderly. And all this is accompanied by the cynical Azeri rhetoric of “reintegrating” the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
The hypocrite rhetoric has reached a level, when Azerbaijani officials spare no effort to repeat that the Armenians left on their own will and no one forced them out as if preparing grounds to exclude their return. If the nine months of blockade of starvation, creation of impossible-for-life conditions, barbaric killings and mutilations of Armenian soldiers, dead bodies, women, even children and elderly during every attack and never being punished for such crimes, Hitler-style fist waiving of their leader and referring to Armenians as “dogs” and a “tumor of Europe” and renaming the street in Stepanakert (capital of Nagorno-Karabakh) after the name of Enver Pasha, one of the three masterminds of the Armenian Genocide, are not sufficient reasons for Armenians to flee, then what is?
The Armenians of Artsakh, who fought for their own self-determination in accordance with the elements of International Law for 35 years, today left their homes, the cradle which has always been inhabited by Armenians for at least the last three millennia and has been Armenian. An unspeakable tragedy of a global level has happened. This must be acknowledged.
The citizen of Artsakh laid down his weapons and left the house with his family because even after enduring nine months of hunger and other deprivations in front of the “progressive” blind public, he or she did not receive the support that should have been received by humane written and unwritten laws, because today the world needed Azerbaijan as a “reliable partner in energy” more than just Armenia fighting for its rights. If human rights, if morality and conscience still have any traces in the Western value system, this policy should have been reviewed before long.
Today, more than 100,000 Artsakh citizens are in Armenia and our government, with the support of international partners and friendly countries, is doing everything to meet their needs. The right of return of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians cannot be questioned and it should be achieved under safe international guarantees and with the presence of internationally mandated peacekeeping forces. Also, the former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh and all PoWs must be returned as soon as possible.
By humiliating Armenians and Armenia, Azerbaijan is not achieving a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it is merely passing the issue onto the burden of future generations. Conflict solution means concessions. We do not notice any concessions from Azerbaijan, we notice only an extremely dangerous genocidal appetite which is growing day by day.
FUTURE OF THE ISSUES, REFUGEES:
There is no alternative to the peaceful settlement of regional problems within the framework of the principles of International Law, including the international commitments undertaken by Baku. Armenia will be consistent in restoring the rights of forcibly displaced Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh, applying all available international legal instruments. As is known, the Armenian culture of Nagorno-Karabakh is quite unique, including the local dialect. Today, Armenia is facing many social problems, like providing housing and employment for 100,000 refugees, despite this, efforts are being made to ensure the compact residence of Karabakh Armenians, to preserve the formed educational culture, public institutions, the goal of which is to preserve the original Karabakh culture and traditions. The preservation of the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno Karabakh is also a very vital issue. It is important for the international structures to take these monuments under international monitoring. Many monuments of the early Christian culture are located there, such as the most impressive Amaras, Dadivank, and Gandzasar monasteries. In a number of places, there were cases of destruction of churches or attempts to rebuild them, in which the Armenian traces were cleaned. If urgent and necessary measures are not taken, we will have a situation as is in Nakhijevan, an Armenian region, where within less than a century not a trace of Armenian existence has been left. Barbarism, wherever it occurs, is condemnable and should be prevented before the day.
WHAT CAN GREECE AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DO? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE SO FAR?
I want to emphasize that the danger of aggression is not neutralized at all. Today, the Azerbaijani army is occupying a part of the sovereign territories of Armenia, continuing its policy of threats of force and blackmail. Azerbaijan is making new demands to Armenia, and in the absence of a clear international response, the danger of new aggression is quite high. The international community has an important mission in bringing Azerbaijan to a constructive field; all the culprits of the disaster must be clearly held accountable.It will be possible to prevent new bloodshed in the region, to force Azerbaijan to give up the threat of force, to return to dialogue only if international actors have a united will and appropriate pressure. Failure to comply with International Law must lead to serious consequences.
16:14, 8 November 2023
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. The European Union's executive recommended on Wednesday that the bloc grants formal candidate status to Georgia, if and when it fulfils remaining conditions, Reuters reports.
"The Commission recommends that the (European) Council grants Georgia the status of a candidate country on the understanding that certain reforms steps are taken," Reuters quoted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as saying.
The outstanding conditions include Georgia aligning itself with the EU's foreign policy sanctions, pushing back against disinformation and political polarisation, as well as ensuring a free and fair 2024 election.
17:09, 8 November 2023
YEREVAN, 8 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs “Armenpress” that today, 8 November, USD exchange rate down by 0.15 drams to 402.51 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.56 drams to 429.48 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.01 drams to 4.37 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 1.75 drams to 493.36 drams.
The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.
Gold price down by 318.86 drams to 25373.41 drams. Silver price down by 8.84 drams to 291.63 drams.