Tuesday,
Pashinian Briefs Blinken On Armenian-Azeri Summit
U.S. - Secretary of State Antony Blinken gathers papers after a Senate Senate
Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on April 26, 2022.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian discussed with U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken the results of his latest talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
in a phone call on Tuesday.
According to the Armenian government’s readout of the call, Pashinian “shared
his impressions” of the five-hour talks hosted and mediated by the European
Union’s top official, Charles Michel, in Brussels on Sunday.
He described them as “generally positive” while complaining about “comments”
that “had nothing to do with the content of the discussions” held in Brussels.
Pashinian apparently alluded to Aliyev’s claim that Armenia will open a
permanent land corridor that will connect Azerbaijan with its Nakhichevan
exclave. A senior Armenian official denied the claim earlier on Tuesday.
“The Secretary of State reaffirmed the U.S. readiness to continue supporting
Armenia's democratic reforms, the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
the demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the opening of regional
communications, and the establishment of regional stability,” read the Armenian
government statement.
The statement also said Blinken praised Yerevan’s “efforts to establish peace
and stability in the region.”
Blinken commended Pashinian on May 2 for the “courage and flexibility”
demonstrated by him in the talks with Baku.
Addressing the Armenian parliament on April 13, the prime minister said the
international community is pressing Armenia to scale back its demands on the
status of Karabakh and recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. He signaled
Yerevan’s intention to make such concessions to Baku.
The country’s leading opposition groups responded by accusing Pashinian of
planning to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. They launched on
May 1 daily demonstrations in Yerevan aimed at forcing him to resign.
Commenting on the peaceful protests on May 9, the U.S. State Department urged
the Armenian opposition to refrain from violence and “respect the rule of law
and Armenia’s democracy.”
Armenia, Azerbaijan Start Talks On Border Demarcation
ARMENIA -- Azerbaijani (L) and Armenian checkpoints at the Sotk gold mine on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Gegharkunik province, June 18, 2021
Deputy prime ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met on Tuesday for the first
round of negotiations on demarcating the long and heavily militarized border
between the two states.
Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Shahin
Mustafayev held the talks at an undisclosed section of the border one day after
being appointed as chairmen of separate Armenian and Azerbaijani government
commissions on the border demarcation.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said they discussed “procedural and organizational
issues relating to joint activities of the commissions.” Grigorian and
Mustafayev decided to hold their next meetings in Moscow and Brussels, the
ministry said without giving dates.
The two men have also co-headed, together with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister
Alexei Overchuk, a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani working group dealing with
practical modalities of opening transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The group has not met since December.
Grigorian’s meeting with Mustafayev came two days after the latest
Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by European Council President Charles Michel
in Brussels. Michel said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev agreed to launch the demarcation process “in the coming
days.”
The process is meant to end long-running border disputes and skirmishes between
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces that have broken out regularly throughout the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It was supposed to get underway shortly after
Aliyev’s and Pashinian’s trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin held in Sochi last November.
The Armenian government insisted until this spring that the delimitation and
demarcation of the border should begin after a set of confidence-building
measures, notably the withdrawal of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops from their
border posts. Baku rejected that demand.
Yerevan Denies Agreeing To ‘Corridor’ For Azerbaijan
• Astghik Bedevian
Azerbaijan - President Ilham Aliyev inspects a newly built road in Nakhichevan,
May 10, 2021.
Armenia denied on Tuesday Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s claim that it has
agreed to open a permanent land corridor that will connect Azerbaijan to its
Nakhichevan exclave.
A senior Armenian official insisted that during their weekend meeting in
Brussels Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian reached understandings only
on conventional transport links between their countries.
European Council President Charles Michel, who hosted the meeting, said early on
Monday that the two leaders agreed on “principles of border administration,
security, land fees but also customs in the context of international transport.”
He did not elaborate.
Speaking with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan later in the day,
Aliyev said the two sides agreed to open a “Zangezur corridor” that will consist
of a road and railway connecting Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan.
Aliyev has repeatedly demanded such a corridor. He said late last year that
people and cargo using it must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Armenian
leaders rejected his demands.
“Armenia’s position has not undergone any changes,” the secretary of the
country’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, told the Armenpress news agency,
commenting on Aliyev’s statement. “In the territory of Armenia, no road or
transport link can function by the logic of a corridor.”
“All understandings reached in Brussels fit into the frames of public statements
previously made by Armenian officials,” said Grigorian.
In written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service sent on April 18, Pashinian’s
office said the prime minister believes that the so-called “Zangezur corridor”
demanded by Baku would jeopardize Armenia’s territorial integrity. His domestic
political opponents are unconvinced by such assurances.
Aliyev and Pashinian reportedly agreed on the practical modalities of
Armenian-Azerbaijani rail links during their first trilateral meeting with
Michel held in December. But they failed to patch up their differences on the
status of the highway for Nakhichevan.
Armenian Foreign Ministry Blocked By Opposition Protesters
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia - Riot police clash with opposition supporters blocking the Foreign
Ministry building in Yerevan, .
Opposition leaders and their supporters blocked the Armenian Foreign Ministry
building in Yerevan on Tuesday during a fourth week of daily protests aimed at
forcing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to resign.
The protesters broke through a police cordon and surrounded the building early
in the morning, preventing ministry officials from entering or leaving it for
nearly three hours.
“With this blockade we are demonstrating that every working hour inside this
building is against our national interests,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, one of
the protest leaders. “We are expressing our outrage by disrupting the work of
state agencies.”
Riot police jostled with the crowd at one point. They made one arrest but did
not manage to unblock the building’s entrances.
Several opposition parliamentarians entered the ministry’s premises two hours
after the start of the blockade. Mobile phone footage circulated by some of them
suggested that the building was largely empty.
Armenia - Opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelian argues with a senior police
officer outside the Armenian Foreign Ministry, .
Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian was one of the few diplomats
encountered by the oppositionists. Safarian pointedly declined to fulfill their
demand to publicly declare that Azerbaijan will not regain full control over
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia’s main opposition groups accused Pashinian of planning to formally
recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh before launching the “civil
disobedience” campaign on May 1. They doubled down on their accusations
following Pashinian’s fresh talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted
by European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels on Sunday.
Michel said after the talks that the two leaders agreed to “advance discussions”
on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty sought by Baku. He said he told them
that it is “necessary that the rights and security of the ethnic Armenian
population in Karabakh be addressed.”
Armenia - Opposition protesters block the entrances to the Foreign Ministry
building in Yerevan, .
In a statement issued on Monday, the opposition portrayed Michel’s comments as
further proof that Yerevan has stopped defending the Karabakh Armenians’ right
to self-determination that had long been accepted by the United States, Russia
and France.
“Nikol Pashinian is not legitimate and does not have a mandate of Armenia’s
citizens’ and the Armenian people to lead our country to new concessions and
cater for the Turkish-Azerbaijani agenda,” the statement charged. “Agreements
reached with him do not reflect the view of the Armenian people and are null and
void.”
Opposition leaders have said that the protests will continue until Pashinian is
removed from office. Their next major rally was scheduled for Tuesday evening.
Pashinian and his political allies reject the opposition demands for his
resignation. They also accuse the opposition of misrepresenting the prime
minister’s policy on the Karabakh conflict.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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