Tuesday,
Armenia, Azerbaijan Preparing For Further Talks
• Shoghik Galstian
U.S. -- Foreign Ministers Ararat Mirzoyan of Armenia and Jeyhun Bayramov of
Azerbaijan meet in Washington, November 7, 2022.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are discussing the date and venue of an upcoming meeting
of their foreign ministers, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
The leaders of the two South Caucasus states reached an agreement on that
meeting during weekend talks in Munich hosted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
They said the ministers will focus on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
“The parties are working out [a date for the meeting,]” Ani Badalian, the
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “In case of
reaching a final agreement, we will inform you further.”
It remained unclear whether the upcoming negotiations will be direct or mediated
by a third party.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been scheduled to host his Armenian
and Azerbaijani counterparts in Washington last November. Azerbaijan’s Foreign
Minister Jeyhun Bayramov withdrew from the trilateral meeting in protest against
what his office called pro-Armenian statements made by a senior U.S. diplomat.
Washington afterwards failed to convince the Azerbaijani leadership to
reschedule it.
Speaking three days before Saturday’s summit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
said that Baku “doesn’t need mediators to normalize relations with Yerevan” and
that the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict “should be removed from the international
agenda.”
Yerevan has insisted on continued Western mediation. In the run-up to the Munich
talks, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Baku of walking away from
understandings reached during his earlier encounters with Aliyev organized by
the European Union. But he said on Sunday that both sides are “committed to
those understandings” relating to the basic parameters of the peace treaty.
“A number of articles of the peace treaty have been agreed but a number of
articles of fundamental importance have not yet been agreed, and efforts must be
made in that direction,” said Pashinian.
Karabakh Leaders ‘Working On Mass Repatriation’ (UPDATED)
• Ruzanna Stepanian
• Astghik Bedevian
A satellite image shows a long traffic jam of vehicles along the Lachin corridor
as ethnic Armenians flee from the Nagorno-Karabakh, September 26, 2023.
A member of Nagorno-Karabakh’s exiled leadership said on Tuesday that it is
taking “concrete steps” for the eventual repatriation of the region’s ethnic
Armenian population displaced by last September’s Azerbaijani military offensive.
“Our struggle will continue,” Gagik Baghunts, the acting Karabakh parliament
speaker, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “The Armenians of Artsakh will not
accept the idea that we have closed the page of Artsakh, and the desire to
return will always stay with us. I hope that we will have significant success in
that direction already in the not-so-distant future.”
“We are taking concrete steps, we will continue to do everything possible so
that the Artsakh Armenians return to the homeland, our historical homeland, and
I hope that despite my rather old age, I will return, not my grandchildren.”
Baghunts refused to shed light on those efforts, saying only that the Karabakh
leaders are ready for “cooperation with world powers” and even “contacts with
the Azerbaijani authorities.” He would not say whether there have already been
such contacts.
Armenia - Gagik Baghunts, the acting Karabakh parliament speaker, talks to
RFE/RL, .
The Azerbaijani government says that the Karabakh Armenians are free to return
to their homes if they agree to live under Azerbaijani rule. Karabakh’s leaders
and ordinary residents rejected such an option even before the Azerbaijani
offensive forced them to flee to Armenia. None of the more than 100,000 Karabakh
refugees are known to have expressed a desire to return home in the current
circumstances.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said last week that Moscow and Baku are now
“discussing prospects for the return of the Armenian population to Karabakh.”
Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanian, dismissed the statement,
saying that only “international guarantees” could convince the Karabakh
Armenians to return to their homeland.
Armenia’s government does not seem to be seeking such guarantees. Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly indicated that the Karabakh issue is closed for
his administration.
Pashinian’s political allies lashed out at Samvel Shahramanian, the Karabakh
president, in late December after he declared null and void his September 28
decree liquidating the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Shahramanian
said that he had to sign the decree in order to stop the Azerbaijani assault and
enable the Karabakh Armenians to safely flee to Armenia.
Shahramanian, Baghunts and other Yerevan-based Karabakh leaders laid flowers at
the Yerablur military ceremony in Yerevan on Tuesday as they marked the 36th
anniversary of the start of a popular movement for Karabakh’s unification with
Karabakh. Later in the day, the Karabakh legislature held a special session on
the occasion.
Nagorno-Karabakh - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a rally in
Stepanakert, August 5, 2019.
For the first time, Pashinian, who had famously declared in 2019 that “Artsakh
is Armenia,” issued no statement on the anniversary.
“Both in 1988 and today, the realization of peoples’ right to self-determination
and democratic freedoms remain a clear goal for us,” he stated in February 2020.
“And we are sure that we will achieve our goals with joint efforts.”
Pashinian stopped championing that right in early 2022 and publicly recognized
Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh a year later. His critics say that the
drastic policy change paved the way for Baku’s recapture of the depopulated
region. The premier has reportedly refused to meet Shahramanian and other
Karabakh leaders since they took refuge in Armenia.
“Armenia did not have a foreign policy, it had a Nagorno-Karabakh policy,”
Pashinian claimed in December 2023. “Armenia did not have a security agenda, it
had a Nagorno-Karabakh security agenda. The resources that we should have
invested in creating the Republic of Armenia we have invested in creating the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”
Growth In Armenian Exports To Russia Moderates
Armenia - Commercial trucks parked at the Bagratashen border crossing with
Georgia, November 29, 2018. (Photo by the State Revenue Committee of Armenia)
A rapid growth in Armenia’s exports to Russia, driven in large measure by
Western sanctions against Moscow, appears to have slowed down significantly in
the fourth quarter of last year.
Armenia was quick to take advantage of the sweeping sanctions imposed following
the Russian invasion of Ukraine, re-exporting second-hand cars, consumer
electronics and other goods manufactured in Western countries and their allies
to Russia. This explains why its exports to Russia tripled in 2022 and doubled
in January-August 2023.
Full-year data released by the Armenian government’s Statistical Committee shows
that they rose by less than 39 percent, to $3.4 billion, in 2023. This suggests
that the lucrative re-exports largely stagnated last fall and December. The
recent introduction of a new Russian tax on imports of used and old cars may
have been one of the factors behind the slowdown.
Also, the re-exports prompted concern from European and especially U.S.
officials in early 2023. They pressed the Armenian authorities to comply with
the Western sanctions. The authorities introduced in May mandatory government
licenses for shipments of microchips, transformers, video cameras, antennas and
other electronic equipment to Russia.
Overall Russian-Armenian trade soared by more than 43 percent to $7.3 billion.
It grew steadily even before the war in Ukraine not least because of Armenia’s
accession in 2014 to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
Russia has since replaced the EU as Armenia’s number one trading partner.
According to the Armenian government data, it accounted last year for over 35
percent of the South Caucasus country’s foreign trade, compared with the EU’s 13
percent share in the total.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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