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Baku Again Rejects Armenian-Azeri Troop Disengagement
• Shoghik Galstian
ARMENIA -- A view of Azerbaijani (L) and Armenian army posts on the on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border, June 18, 2021
Azerbaijan has rejected Armenia’s renewed calls for a mutual withdrawal of the
two countries’ troops from their long and volatile border.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian first came up with the idea of troop
disengagement in May 2021 shortly after Azerbaijani forces advanced into
Armenian territory at several sections of the border. The idea was subsequently
backed by the European Union and the United States but not Azerbaijan.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said earlier this week that Yerevan
still hopes that Baku will agree to the mutual troop withdrawal. He said it
would be a fresh confidence-building measure following the latest exchange of
Armenian and Azerbaijani prisoners welcomed by the international community.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov dismissed Mirzoyan’s calls during
a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan held in Baku on
Thursday.
“The Armenian-Azerbaijani border has not been delimited,” said Bayramov. “It’s a
complex issue. If the troops are withdrawn without a comprehensive agreement who
can guarantee that one of the parties will not seize [border] positions.”
Arsen Torosian, an Armenian lawmaker representing the ruling Civil Contract
party, criticized this stance on Friday, saying that Baku wants to keep up
pressure on the Armenian side in ongoing talks on a bilateral peace treaty and
border delimitation. Torosian also questioned Baku’s commitment to a “genuine
peace.”
Armenian Speaker Won’t Rule Out CSTO Exit
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian speaks to journalists, Yerevan,
November 28, 2023.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian on Friday accused the Collective Security
Treaty Organization (CSTO) of “criminal inaction” and did not rule out the
possibility of Armenia’s exit from the Russian-led military alliance.
“If Armenia’s interests require any [foreign policy] U-turn, there will be such
a U-turn,” Simonian told reporters in Gyumri. “If such a decision is made the
people of Armenia will know about it.”
“On a number of occasions, the CSTO has demonstrated criminal inaction, to say
the least, towards Armenia,” he charged. “Let nobody think that we expected or
expect soldiers of [other] CSTO countries to come here and shoot at
Azerbaijanis. But we should have at least seen a political evaluation [of
Azerbaijan’s actions,] and we haven’t seen it.”
Simonian, who is a leading political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian,
referred to the CSTO’s and Russia’s failure to condemn Azerbaijan’s offensive
military operations launched along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border last year and
in 2021. Armenia officially requested military aid from its ex-Soviet allies in
September 2022.
Pashinian subsequently pledged to “diversify” his Armenia’s foreign and security
policy, saying that Russia is “unable or unwilling” to honor its security
commitments to his country. He and other Armenian officials have boycotted
high-level CSTO meetings held in recent months, raising growing questions about
Armenia’s continued membership in the alliance.
It contrast to his harsh criticism of the CSTO, Simonian said Armenia should
remain a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trade bloc,
and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a larger and looser grouping
of former Soviet republics. He pointed to its economic dependence on Russia and
described the CIS as a “platform for cooperation that benefits our country.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that Yerevan is not
planning to leave any of the three organizations.
“I don’t think that it is in Armenia’s interests to end its membership in the
CIS, the EEU and the CSTO,” Putin told a year-end news conference in Moscow.
Moscow Warns Yerevan Against Scrapping Russian-Brokered Deals
Armenia - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets Russia's Deputy Prime
Minister Alexei Overchuk, Yerevan, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met with Russia’s visiting Deputy Prime Minister
Alexei Overchuk on Friday one day after Moscow accused Yerevan of not complying
with a Russian-brokered agreement to open the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to
travel and commerce.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday also warned Pashinian’s administration
against walking away from this and other agreements that were brokered by
Russian President Vladimir Putin during and after the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
“In the absence of a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we consider
attempts to revoke these important documents extremely dangerous,” the ministry
spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in a statement. “Such a step would inevitably
result in serious risks, primarily for Armenia itself.”
Yerevan cannot manage those risks “with the help of Western
pseudo-intermediaries,” Zakharova warned. She went on to deplore “a whole series
of actions by Yerevan due to which it was not possible to fully implement the
trilateral agreements.”
“In particular, for many months the Armenian side has been blocking the start of
work to restore railway communication between Azerbaijan and Armenia, refusing
to comply with the provisions of paragraph 9 of the high-level statement of
November 9, 2020,” she said.
The paragraph stipulates that Russian border guards stationed in Armenia will
“control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods between Azerbaijan and its
Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian territory. A senior Armenian official said
earlier this year that this only allows them to “monitor” the commercial
traffic, rather than escort it, let alone be involved in border controls.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev,
left, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attend a trilateral meeting in
Moscow, May 25, 2023.
The Azerbaijani government is understood to have demanded that the special
transport link for Nakhichevan be exempt from Armenian border controls. Armenia
has repeatedly ruled out that.
The issue was high on the agenda of Pashinian’s meeting with Overchuk, who is
also a co-chair of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force dealing with
planned transport links. The Armenian premier was cited by his press office as
telling Overchuk that Yerevan remains committed to “unblocking regional
transport infrastructure based on the principles of sovereignty, jurisdiction,
equality and reciprocity.”
A statement by the office gave no other details of their talks. Mher Grigorian,
an Armenian deputy premier and another co-chair of the trilateral commission,
was also in attendance.
The Sputnik news agency quoted Overchuk as saying later on Friday that the
commission has worked out a “document” on the Armenian-Azerbaijani rail link
which is “in a high degree of readiness" for signing. He did not say what
exactly keeps the sides from signing it and whether that could happen anytime
soon. Nor did he criticize Yerevan in that regard.
Overchuk spoke after co-chairing with Grigorian a regular session of a separate
Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.
The main purpose of the 2020 agreement cited by Zakharova was to stop fighting
in Karabakh and prevent new hostilities. The deal also called for the deployment
of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and gave them control over the Lachin
corridor connecting the region to Armenia.
The peacekeepers did not push back when Baku disrupted commercial and
humanitarian traffic through the corridor in December 2022 and set up a
checkpoint there in April in breach of the ceasefire. Nor did they intervene
when the Azerbaijani army went on the offensive in Karabakh on September 19,
forcing its practically entire population to flee to Armenia.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Ethnic Armenians pass through a Russian checkpooint as they
flee Karabakh for Armenia, 26 September 2023.
Unlike the European Union and the United States, Russia did not even denounce
the offensive. Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have said that Moscow’s
stance constituted an even more serious violation of the truce accord.
Zakharova’s statement essentially blamed Armenia for the assault, backing
Azerbaijani allegations that it supplied weapons to Karabakh through Lachin and
did not withdraw all Armenian troops from the disputed territory. Yerevan has
strongly denied the allegations that were never publicly echoed by the Russian
peacekeepers.
Zakharova also repeated Russian claims that Pashinian sealed the fate of the
Karabakh Armenians by recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh during
talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev organized by the EU in October
2022 and May 2022. Putin likewise said on Thursday Karabakh was “abandoned” by
Armenia, not Russia.
Moscow’s latest warning to Yerevan came amid unprecedented tensions between the
two longtime allies and ongoing Western efforts to broker an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. In particular, the U.S. is now trying to
agree a new date for a meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers which was due to take place in Washington on November 20. Baku
cancelled the meeting, citing what it called pro-Armenian statements made by a
senior U.S. official.
Conflicting Claims On Russian TV Coverage Of Armenia
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Armenia's Deputy Minsiter of High-Technology Avet Poghosian and
Russia's Deputy Minister of Mass Communication Bella Cherkesova sign a joint
statement in Yerevan.
Russia has denied admitting that its leading state-owned TV channels have
violated terms of their retransmission in Armenia agreed by the governments of
the two countries three years ago.
A relevant Russian-Armenian agreement signed in December 2020 allowed the two
channels as well as the Kultura TV station affiliated with one of them to retain
their slots in Armenia’s national digital package accessible to TV viewers
across the country. The agreement bars them from commenting on domestic Armenian
politics and spreading “hate speech.”
Armenia’s National Commission on Television and Radio has recently accused the
Kremlin-controlled broadcasters of violating this provision amid a further
deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations. In September, an Armenian
pro-government lawmaker called for a ban on their retransmission, saying that
the Russian broadcasts pose a threat to the South Caucasus nation’s security.
She appeared to allude to their reports critical of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian.
The Armenian Ministry of High-Technology pledged to raise the matter with the
Russian government. In a statement released on Thursday, the ministry said
senior officials from the Russian Ministry of Digital Development and Mass
Communication acknowledged violations of the retransmission agreement during
talks held with its representatives.
“An agreement was reached to take steps towards proper compliance with all
points of the agreement,” it said.
The Russian ministry was quick to deny this in a statement cited by Russian news
agencies, however.
“The Russian side took note of the concerns of the Armenian side. However, no
specific documentary evidence of these facts was provided by [Armenian]
colleagues,” read the statement.
It added that the two sides agreed to “ensure full implementation of the
agreement” and “maintain close cooperation.”
The Armenian ministry insisted on Friday that the Russian side the “accepted the
fact of violations” in a joint communiqué adopted by them. It noted at the same
time that the Armenian side avoided holding a “substantive discussion” of those
violations during the talks.
RUSSIA -- The flag of Channel One at the Ostankino TV Center in Moscow, October
28, 2019
The Armenian government faced more calls from its supporters and Western-funded
groups to ban the retransmission after Russia’s leading state broadcaster,
Channel One, derided and lambasted Pashinian during an hour-long program aired
in October. The program featured pro-Kremlin panelists who denounced Pashinian’s
track record and portrayed him as a Western puppet tasked with ending Armenia’s
close relationship with Russia.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to protest against
“offensive and absolutely unacceptable statements” made during the show.
The Armenian charge d’affaires in Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign
Ministry the following day. Ministry officials condemned what they called
anti-Russian propaganda spread by Armenia’s government-controlled media.
In the last few years, Armenian Public Television has regularly interviewed and
invited politicians and commentators highly critical of Moscow to its political
talk shows. Their appearances in prime-time programs of the TV channel run by
Pashinian’s loyalists have become even more frequent lately.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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