Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Armenia, Azerbaijan Make Progress Towards Peace Deal
April 07, 2022
Belgium - European Council President Charles Michel, Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev begin a trilateral
meeting in Brussels, April 6, 2022.
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to start drafting a bilateral
“peace treaty” and set up a joint commission on demarcating the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border during fresh talks in Brussels hosted by European
Council President Charles Michel.
“We have decided all together to launch a concrete process, to prepare a
possible peace treaty and to address all necessary elements for such a treaty,”
Michel told reporters on Wednesday night after his trilateral meeting with
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
that lasted for more than four hours.
“I am confident that tonight we took an important step in the right direction,”
he said. “It doesn’t mean everything is solved. But it means that we made
progress.”
In a written statement issued shortly afterwards, Michel said Aliyev and
Pashinian pledged to “move rapidly” towards the comprehensive treaty meant to
resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They will instruct their foreign
ministers to “work on the preparation” of such a deal, added the head of the
European Union’s main decision-making body.
The Armenian government’s press office confirmed these instructions in a
statement on the late-night talks.
Baku wants the peace deal to be based on five elements, including a mutual
recognition of each other’s territorial integrity. Pashinian has publicly stated
that they are acceptable to Yerevan in principle, fuelling Armenian opposition
claims that he is ready to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said last week that Yerevan will also raise the
issue of Karabakh’s status with the Azerbaijani side. The Armenian government
statement on the Brussels talks made no mention of the issue.
Michel said after the talks that the two sides now have a better understanding
of possible parameters of the deal. But he did not elaborate.
The top EU official also announced that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed to “convene
a Joint Border Commission by the end of April.” “The mandate of the Joint Border
Commission will be to delimit the bilateral border between Armenia and
Azerbaijan and ensure a stable security situation along and in the vicinity of
the borderline,” he said.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders already agreed to set up such a commission
during their November 2021 talks in Sochi hosted by Russian President Vladimir
Putin. It was expected that Russian officials will actively participate in the
commission’s work.
It was not immediately clear whether Yerevan and Baku decided to exclude any
Russian involvement in the border demarcation.
Armenian Death Toll In Ukraine Revealed
April 06, 2022
• Marine Khachatrian
UKRAINE - An armoured vehicle of pro-Russian troops drives along a street past a
residential building destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged
southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 31, 2022.
At least 23 ethnic Armenian citizens or residents of Ukraine have been killed
since the start of the Russian invasion, according to leaders of the country’s
Armenian community.
Davit Mkrtchian, the deputy chairman of the Union of Armenians of Ukraine, said
on Wednesday that 18 of them were civilians while the five others served in the
Ukrainian military.
“We pray that the real number [of Armenian deaths] is not higher,” Mkrtchian
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Once in every two or three days we hear about
people getting killed here and there.”
Estimates of the number of ethnic Armenians who lived in Ukraine before the war
vary from 100,000 to 400,000. Many of them are said to hold Armenian passports.
The European Union has allowed them to enter Ukraine’s EU neighbors without
Schengen visas.
Like millions of Ukrainians, many local Armenians have fled the country since
the start of the conflict on February 24. But even their approximate number
remains unknown to both the community leaders and Armenia’s government.
The Foreign Ministry in Yerevan said last month that it has not organized
charter flights for such refugees because few of them are willing to relocate to
Armenia.
Mkrtchian disputed that claim, saying that many Armenians expressed a desire to
take refuge in Armenia at the start of the devastating war.
UKRAINE - Fire and smoke light up the night sky east of Kharkiv, March 30, 2022.
According to the Kyiv-based activist, a large number of Armenians remain trapped
in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the epicenter of fierce fighting, and, in
particular, the regional city of Mariupol besieged and partly occupied by
Russian troops.
Karen Ghulian, an Armenian-born man, lived in Mariupol for over two decades.
Ghulian said that he, his family and a group of other local Armenians risked
their lives to flee the war-torn city late last week.
“I realized that if we don’t get out I could lose my family,” he told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service. “We got caught in crossfire.”
Ghulian said he and his family members moved to a friend’s apartment weeks ago
after their house was destroyed by shelling.
“Conditions there were terrible,” he said. “There was a lack of food, water,
everything. There were no working shops. They all were empty, looted or bombed.”
Blinken Urges ‘De-Escalation’ In Karabakh
April 06, 2022
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks after viewing the "Burma's
Path To Genocide" exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, March 21, 2022.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a de-escalation of tensions in
Nagorno-Karabakh in separate phone calls with the leaders of Armenia and
Azerbaijan on Tuesday.
Blinken spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev the day before their talks in Brussels hosted by European
Council President Charles Michel.
“The Secretary underscored that now was not the time for further escalation in
the region,” the U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said in written
comments on the call with Pashinian.
“The Secretary expressed his encouragement for further peace negotiations
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, including Pashinian’s and Aliyev’s planned
meeting April 6 with European Council President Michel,” he said.
“The Secretary called for restraint, de-escalation, and renewed diplomacy,”
Price said in a separate statement on his conversation with Aliyev.
The trilateral meeting in Brussels was scheduled a week after Azerbaijani troops
seized a village in eastern Karabakh and tried to push deeper into the
territory, sparking deadly fighting with Karabakh Armenian forces.
The U.S. State Department deplored the Azerbaijani troop movements, calling them
“irresponsible and unnecessarily provocative.” Baku rejected the criticism.
Aliyev and Pashinian decided last week to meet in Brussels as Azerbaijan pressed
Armenia to accept its proposals on a “peace treaty” between the two nations.
Aliyev was reported to discuss those proposals with Blinken.
According to Price, Blinken told both leaders that the United States is ready to
help Yerevan and Baku reach a “long-term comprehensive” peace accord by
“engaging bilaterally and with like-minded partners, including through our role
as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair.”
It was not clear whether Washington will continue to work with Russia, another
co-chair of the Minsk Group, in seeking an end to the Karabakh conflict.
Price cited Blinken as condemning Moscow’s “heinous war crimes in Ukraine” and
reaffirming Washington’s commitment to “hold the Russian Federation and its
enablers accountable for the unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine.”
Armenia’s Food Inflation Remains In Double Digits
April 06, 2022
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Shoppers at a food supermarket in Yerevan.
Food prices in Armenia rose by an average of 12.1 percent in the first quarter
of this year despite the authorities’ pledges to curb inflation.
Data released by the Armenian government’s Statistical Committee shows that they
were up by nearly 13 percent year on year in March, translating into an overall
inflation rate of 7.4 percent.
Annual inflation reached 7.7 percent in December, well above a 4 percent target
set by the government and the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) for 2021. A sharp
rise in food prices, which reflects a global trend, was the key factor behind
the increased cost of living in the country.
In an effort to curb rising inflation, the CBA has raised its benchmark interest
rate for nine times since December 2020.
The bank most recently hiked the rate in mid-March, citing fallout from Western
economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The government likewise predicted that the escalating conflict further push up
the cost of food staples in Armenia. The South Caucasus country imports a large
part of its wheat, cooking oil and other basic foodstuffs from Russia.
Also contributing to higher-than-projected inflation are recent increases in the
prices of electricity and natural gas approved by utility regulators.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
