Tuesday,
Armenian, Azeri FMs Begin Fresh Talks In U.S.
Հունիս 27, 2023
U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts talks between the Armenian
and Azerbaijani foreing ministers in Arlington, Virginia, .
The Armenian and Armenian foreign ministers began on Tuesday a new round of
U.S.-mediated negotiations focusing on a peace treaty between the two South
Caucasus states.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended the opening session of the talks
in Arlington, Virginia after holding separate meetings with Armenia’s Ararat
Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan’s Jeyhun Bayramov.
The talks continued in a bilateral format. The U.S. State Department spokesman,
Matthew Miller, said on Monday that they will likely last for three days.
“We continue to believe that peace is within reach and direct dialogue is the
key to resolving the remaining issues and reaching a durable and dignified
peace,” Miller told a news briefing in Washington.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov reported major progress towards the peace treaty after
meeting outside the U.S. capital for four consecutive days in early May.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
held three face-to-face meetings in the following weeks.
The two sides say that despite Pashinian’s pledge to recognize Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh through the peace treaty, they still disagree
on other sticking points.
Tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and “the line of contact” around
Karabakh have increased over the last few weeks, with the sides accusing each
other of violating the ceasefire on a virtually daily basis. A June 15 skirmish
on the Lachin corridor led Azerbaijan to completely block relief supplies to
Karabakh through the sole road connecting the disputed region to Armenia. The
move aggravated shortages of food, medicine and other essential items in
Karabakh.
Mirzoyan brought up the “illegal” blockade and the resulting humanitarian crisis
in Karabakh with Blinken during their separate conversation. For his part,
Bayramov was reported to tell Blinken that Yerevan is attempting to “obstruct
the peace process.”
Pashinian Defends Failure To Prevent 2020 War
Հունիս 27, 2023
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian prepares to testify before an Armenian
parliamentary commission, Yerevan, ,
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Tuesday sought to justify his failure to avert
the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, saying that it might not have broken out had
he made disproportionate concessions to Azerbaijan.
He testified before an ad hoc commission of the Armenian parliament for the
second time in just over a week in what opposition groups see as continuing
attempts to dodge responsibility for the disastrous war.
Pashinian defended his handling of the six-week hostilities in his first lengthy
testimony given on June 20. He focused on events preceding them while answering
on Tuesday questions from pro-government members of the commission tasked with
examining the causes of Armenia’s defeat.
“I’m not saying that it was theoretically impossible to avoid the war,” he told
the panel boycotted by opposition lawmakers. “But the necessary condition for
that theoretical possibility was a renunciation of, let’s put it this way, the
Armenian vision for settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”
Asked what he thinks he had failed to do before the war, Pashinian said: “I feel
guilty about absolutely everything, but I say, ‘OK, it’s just a declaration.’
When I start drawing up my own indictment … I enter a deadlock at some point.”
Armenian opposition leaders say that Pashinian made the war with Azerbaijan
inevitable by mishandling peace talks mediated by the United States, Russia and
France. They specifically accuse him of recklessly rejecting a peace deal put
forward by the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.
The plan was the last version of their so-called Madrid Principles of the
conflict’s resolution originally drafted in 2007. It called for an eventual
referendum of self-determination in Karabakh that would take place after the
gradual liberation of virtually all seven districts occupied by Karabakh
Armenian forces in the early 1990s.
In 2021, former President Serzh Sarkisian publicized the secretly recorded audio
of a 2019 meeting during which Pashinian said he opposes the plan because it
would not immediately formalize Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan. Pashinian
said he is ready to “play the fool or look a bit insane” in order to avoid such
a settlement.
Pashinian has repeatedly alleged that the Madrid Principles recognized Karabakh
as a part of Azerbaijan. His political opponents and other critics shrug off
those claims, arguing that the proposed settlement upheld the Karabakh
Armenians’ right to self-determination.
Another Russian-Armenian Meeting On Lachin Corridor Crisis
RUSSIA - The Russian Foreign Ministry building is seen behind a social
advertisement billboard showing Z letters - a tactical insignia of Russian
troops in Ukraine - and reading "Victory is being Forged in Fire," Moscow,
October 13, 2022.
Armenia’s ambassador to Russia has visited the Foreign Ministry in Moscow after
Yerevan blamed Russian peacekeepers for a shooting incident that led to the
tightening of Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian border guards opened fire on June 15 to stop Azerbaijani servicemen
from placing an Azerbaijani flag near a checkpoint controversially set up by
them in the Lachin corridor in late April. Baku denied that they tried to cross
into Armenian territory.
Videos of the incident suggest that the Azerbaijanis were escorted by Russian
soldiers as they crossed a bridge over the Hakari river in order to hoist the
flag. The Armenian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Yerevan
on June 16 to express “strong discontent” with the Russian peacekeepers’ actions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, defended the
peacekeepers and rejected the Armenian criticism as “absolutely groundless.” She
said the incident resulted from the “absence of a delimited Armenian-Azerbaijani
border.”
The Armenian Foreign Ministry dismissed that argument on June 22, saying that
Zakharova echoed Baku’s regular justifications of its “aggressive actions
against Armenia’s borders.” It said that instead of “looking for excuses,”
Moscow should help to ensure the conflicting parties’ full compliance with a
Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war Karabakh.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reported late on Monday that Deputy Foreign
Minister Mikhail Galuzin “received” Armenian Ambassador Vagharshak Harutiunian.
A short statement released by the ministry said they discussed in detail
“developments in the Lachin corridor and around Nagorno-Karabakh in general.”
Galuzin stressed the importance of unconditional implementation of all
Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Moscow during and after the 2020
war, the statement added without elaborating.
It was not clear whether the Russian Foreign Ministry formally summoned
Harutiunian to again hit back at the Armenian Foreign Ministry. The latter did
not issue a statement on Harutiunian’s conversation with Galuzin.
The ceasefire agreement placed the only road connecting Karabakh to Armenia
under the control of the Russian peacekeeping contingent and committed
Azerbaijan to guaranteeing safe passage through it. Azerbaijan blocked
commercial traffic there last December before setting up the checkpoint in what
the Armenian side denounced as a further gross violation of the Russian-brokered
ceasefire.
Dashnaktsutyun Demands Stronger International Pressure On Baku
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Members and supporters of the opposition Dashnaktsutyun party picket
the Russian Embassy in Yerevan, .
Members and supporters of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun)
picketed the Russian and key Western diplomatic missions in Yerevan on Tuesday
to demand that the international community do more to end Azerbaijan’s
seven-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The opposition party organized a 24-hour sit-in outside the Russian, U.S. and
French embassies as well as the European Union mission almost two weeks after
Baku halted the movement of humanitarian convoys through the Lachin corridor.
“Azerbaijan’s impunity has led to the fact that Artsakh (Karabakh) is cut off
from the outside world,” one of the protesters said through a megaphone.
Russia and the EU have expressed serious concern over the further tightening of
the blockade, which has aggravated the shortages of food, medicine and other
essential items in Karabakh.
Organizers of the sit-in complained that such statements alone cannot force Baku
to unblock the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. They demanded stronger
action from the foreign powers and Russia in particular, which brokered a
ceasefire agreement that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war and has
peacekeeping troops in Karabakh.
“Russia needs to take much more practical steps because Azerbaijan’s brazenness
is transcending all limits,” Gegham Manukian, a Dashnaktsutyun leader, told
reporters.
“After all, it’s Russia that has the strongest political, diplomatic and
military instruments in our region and brokered the November 9 [2020] agreement.
Therefore, it’s Russia that must first and foremost take concrete steps to end
the blockade,” said Anna Grigorian, another lawmaker representing the main
opposition Hayastan alliance comprising Dashnaktsutyun.
Hayastan and other major opposition groups also blame the Armenian government
for the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Karabakh. They say that Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s pledge to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the
Armenian-populated region only emboldened Baku to step up the pressure on the
Karabakh Armenians.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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