Thursday,
Israel Accuses Drone Maker Of Bombing Armenian Soldiers, At Baku's Request
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Smoke from fire rises above the ground in Martakert
district, after an Israeli-made Azerbaijani "suicide" drone was shot down by
the Karabakh army, 4 April 2016.
Israel has accused an Israeli drone maker of bombing ethnic Armenian soldiers
in Nagorno-Karabakh at the request of Azerbaijani clients during a sales
demonstration, government and local media reported.
The accusation by Israel’s Justice Ministry on Wednesday did not specifically
mention Azerbaijan or Nagorno-Karabakh in its statement. But Israeli media said
a complaint filed with the Defense Ministry, which promoted an investigation,
made it clear that Azerbaijani officials and Armenian soldiers were involved.
The Defense Ministry complaint was leaked to the Maariv newspaper, which first
reported the incident in August 2017. It was unclear who exactly filed the
complaint.
In its statement on August 29, the Israeli Justice Ministry said it plans to
indict the chief executive, deputy CEO, and other officials and employees of
Aeronautics Defense Systems for the incident, which it said occurred earlier in
2017.
"Aeronautics and 10 of its employees were informed that they were set to be
charged, pending a hearing," the Justice Ministry said, according to The Times
of Israel.
The Aeronautics team is suspected of "fraudulently obtaining something under
aggravated circumstances," along with violations of Israel's security export
control law, the newspaper reported.
In response, the Yavneh-based firm said it is “convinced that after we first
present our position at the hearing, the State Prosecutor’s Office will reach
an informed decision that there is no reason to put the company or any of its
officers in court and will order the case closed.”
An official at Azerbaijan’s embassy in Washington declined to comment to RFE/RL
on an Israeli legal proceeding, saying he did not want to interfere in another
country’s internal matters.
The Maariv and Times of Israel reports said Aeronautics officials in 2017 were
working on a potential $20 million deal with Baku, when Azerbaijani officials
asked them to demonstrate their Orbiter 1K armed drone on Armenian soldiers.
The reports said two employees refused to carry out the attack before two
higher-ranking executives eventually agreed to do it. They said the drone did
not directly hit their targets, but two soldiers were injured in the attack.
Israel suspended Aeronautics' export license after the complaint was filed with
the Defense Ministry, the report said.
According to Karabakh’s Armenian-backed Defense Army, the Azerbaijani military
most recently attacked its frontline positions with a suicide drone on July 7,
2017. The commander of an army unit stationed in northeastern Karabakh said
that two of his soldiers were lightly wounded in the incident.
The Azerbaijani army heavily used similar suicide drones manufactured by
another Israeli company during the April 2016 hostilities in Karabakh. Baku had
bought the Harop drones as part of multimillion-dollar defense contracts signed
with Israeli arms manufacturers.
Armenia has long expressed concern at the Israeli-Azerbaijani arms deals,
saying that they undermine international efforts to end the Karabakh conflict.
The drone scandal was exposed by the Israeli paper more than two weeks after
Israeli Minister of Regional Cooperation Tzachi Hanegbi visited Yerevan in an
apparent bid to improve his country’s frosty relationship with Armenia. Hanegbi
met with then Prime Minister Karen Karapetian and other senior Armenian
officials in late July 2017.
Armenia Explores Arms Deals With India
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Pinaka Missile system
Armenia is exploring the possibility of buying rocket systems and other weapons
manufactured by India for its armed forces, the Defense Ministry said on
Wednesday.
“A group of our military officials, who are India at the moment, are looking
into Indian weapons and several of them are of interest to us,” the ministry
spokesman, Artsrun Hovannisian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
“The Indian defense industry has quite interesting solutions on various
offensive and defensive weapons which interest us,” he said. “But I can’t speak
of any concrete projects or agreements right now.”
The Times of India daily last week quoted a senior executive of an Indian
defense firm as saying that the Armenian military is showing an interest in the
Pinaka multiple-launch rocket systems manufactured by it.
“We carried out extensive firing trials for their delegation last month at
Pokhran in Rajasthan,” said KM Rajan of the Defense Research and Development
Organization. “The results were excellent.”
Hovannisian said in this regard that Pinaka, which has a firing range up to 75
kilometers, does not represent Armenia’s “sole and greatest interest” in Indian
weapons. But he did not elaborate.
Another Armenian Defense Ministry delegation visited India and toured a number
of Indian defense enterprises in May 2017. The ministry said it discussed with
Indian officials “mutually beneficial variants of developing cooperation in
this direction.”
The Indian ambassador in Yerevan, Yogeshwar Shangwan, said afterwards that his
country is ready to deepen relations with “friendly” Armenia “in all areas.”
“Even in the area of defense, we are open to cooperation with Armenia,” he told
RFE/RL’s Armenian service in June 2017.
India - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with Armenian President Serzh
Sarkisian in New Delhi, 3Nov2017.
India’s arch-foe Pakistan staunchly supports Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, refusing to not only establish diplomatic relations with Armenia but
also formally recognize the latter as an independent state. Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev said after October 2016 talks in Baku with then
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that the two Muslim nations will step up
bilateral defense cooperation.
Russia has been by far the most important supplier of weapons and other
military hardware to the Armenian army. Hovannisian said Yerevan now wants to
somewhat diversify its arms procurements.
“Of course we seek to work with a single supplier in order to facilitate the
process of delivery, maintenance and training [of military personnel,]” said
the official. “But there are weapons that should be acquired from other states
because opportunities are numerous. And India, by the way, is one of those
countries which have made huge progress in this area in the last 15-20 years.”
Turkish American Lobbyist Arrested In Armenia
• Emil Danielyan
Armenia - Turkish American activist Kemal Oksuz is questioned by Armenian
police, .
The former head of a Turkish American lobbying group that had cooperated with
Azerbaijan’s government has been detained in Armenia on an arrest warrant
issued by U.S. law-enforcement authorities.
Kemal (Kevin) Oksuz used to run the Texas-based Turquoise Council of Americans
and Eurasians as well as the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan. The two
groups came under scrutiny after organizing in 2013 an all-expenses-paid visit
to Azerbaijan by 10 members and 32 staffers of the U.S. Congress.
The Washington Post reported in 2015 that the trip was secretly funded by
Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR in violation of U.S. congressional
rules. Citing a confidential report by the U.S. Office of Congressional Ethics,
the paper said that through the groups headed by Oksuz SOCAR spent $750,000 for
that purpose.
The report led the Ethics Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to
launch an inquiry. Oksuz reportedly refused to testify in the probe.
The Armenian police revealed on Thursday that Oksuz subsequently moved to
Armenia and set up a company there. In a statement, the police said that U.S.
law-enforcement authorities issued an international arrest warrant for him on
August 23.
The American citizen of Turkish descent is wanted in the United States for
lying to the House Ethics Committee about foreign funding received by his
organizations, the statement said, adding that he was arrested in Yerevan on
Wednesday.
The police also released a short video of Oksuz’s first interrogation. Oksuz
was shown admitting that SOCAR, which is closely linked to the Azerbaijani
government, covered the travel expenses of the U.S. officials and gave them
expensive gifts in 2013. “That may have been corruption, I don’t know,” he said.
It was not clear why he decided to relocate to Armenia, a country that has
strained relations with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. Oksuz admitted that just
like other Turkish American activists he had lobbied the Congress against
recognizing the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
“The Armenian Diaspora [in the United States] is strong and does a good job,”
he told the police. “The Azerbaijani lobby is nothing. They only spend money on
lobbying but achieve nothing.”
Reporting on Oksuz’s arrest, the pro-government Turkish newspaper “Sabah”
referred to him as a “high-ranking” loyalist of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based
Turkish cleric facing coup charges in Turkey. The paper also called his
Turquoise Council of Americans a “Gulenist umbrella organization.”
Thousands of Gulen supporters have been jailed in Turkey since a failed 2016
coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Government Seeks To Criminalize Vote Buying In Armenia
• Anush Muradian
Armenia - A polling station in Yerevan, 2Apr2017.
The Armenian government moved on Thursday to make it a criminal offense to buy
or sell votes in elections held in the country.
Armenia’s existing legislation already bans parties and individual candidates
from handing out or promising cash, other material benefits and services to
voters during election campaigns. The practice is punishable only by fines.
Draft amendments to the Armenian Criminal Code approved by Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s cabinet call for prison sentences for anyone buying or attempting
to buy votes.
What is more, they stipulate that Armenians selling their votes will also face
imprisonment. But such voters will avoid prosecution if they confess to taking
vote bribes within three days after an election, according to the government
bill which is expected to be debated by the Armenian parliament next week.
Vote buying was widespread in just about every major election held in Armenia
in the last two decades. Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of
Armenia (HHK) was accused by its opponents and media of heavily relying on the
practice in the last parliamentary polls held in April 2017.Observers from the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that they were marred
by “many credible reports” of vote buying.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Pashinian said the bill, if passed by the
parliament, will help to significantly improve the conduct of future Armenian
elections, including municipal polls in Yerevan slated for September 23.
Press Review
“Zhamanak” reports that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party
has teamed up with his other supporters to run in next month’s municipal
elections in Yerevan. The paper notes that it will be the first ballot held
after the recent “velvet revolution” in Armenia and it could prove the most
democratic in the country’s history. It says at the same time that with
Pashinian remaining very popular the elections will hardly be competitive.
“Zhoghovurd” says that Vahram Baghdasarian, a senior lawmaker from the
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), was right to say on Wednesday that the HHK
would not have avoided mass anti-government protests last spring even if it had
not installed Serzh Sarkisian as prime minister. The paper says that the HHK
had long retained power through vote rigging and repression. “So it is natural
that anyone nominated by the HHK for the post of prime minister would have met
with public resistance,” it says.
“Aravot” reports that residents of seven villages in northwestern Armenia
blocked a major highway to protest against their incorporation into a single
community. “This is a highly sensitive issue,” writes the paper. “Many
arguments are made for and against such a [community] consolidation. It is hard
to tell whether not the protesters’ demands are justified.” The paper complains
about offensive comments on social media about the protests.
(Tigran Avetisian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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