13:48, 8 January, 2022
YEREVAN, JANUARY 8, ARMENPRESS. During a telephone conversation today with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed to hold a virtual meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Council chaired by Armenia as it is now holding the presidency at the organization. Putin welcomed the proposal, the Kremlin press service reports.
Tokayev also presented details about the current situation in Kazakhstan, stating that it is gradually stabilizing. In this context he thanked the CSTO partners and especially the Russian partners for the support being provided.
The two presidents exchanged views also about the measures aimed at restoring order in Kazakhstan.
Tokayev stressed the need for a joint talk of the CSTO leaders at this moment.
The Russian and Kazakh presidents agreed to be in constant touch.
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his wife, Landra, visited the St. Garabed Church of Las Vegas in 2013 where they were met by Adroushan Armenian
Harry Reid, longtime Nevada Senator, former Senate Majority Leader and a close friend of Armenia and the Armenian community passed away on Tuesday. He was 82.
Reid, whose Senate tenure spanned three decades, was a steadfast advocate for justice for the Armenian people.
Throughout his career, Senator Reid championed efforts in the U.S. Senate to recognize the Armenian Genocide – even in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition – and questioned the State Department on its response to Azerbaijan’s destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhichevan, as well as Baku’s obstruction of the OSCE Minsk Process.
For his service to the Armenian community, the Armenian National Committee of America honored Senator Reid with its prestigious “Freedom Award” in 2012.
In his acceptance speech, Reid described the resilience and endurance of the Armenian community as a “testament and honor to those who were lost in the genocide” and urged that “we must always be vigilant to atrocities like the Armenian Genocide from occurring ever again, in any part of the world.”
14:11,
STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. A man from the village of Aygestan in Artsakh’s Askeran Province was arrested by Azerbaijani troops after accidentally crossing into Azeri-controlled territories in the morning of December 29.
The National Security Service of Artsakh said in a statement that they received a missing-person report around 07:30, December 29 concerning the whereabouts of Armen Verdyan, a 50-year-old resident of Aygestan.
Investigators then found out that the man got lost near Nakhijevanik and Ughtasar and accidentally crossed into the Azeri-controlled areas and was subsequently taken into custody by Azeri troops.
The Artsakh authorities said they’ve immediately notified the Russian peacekeepers, who in turn have validated that Armen Verdyan is safe.
“Negotiations are now underway to return the citizen of Artsakh,” the NSS said .
09:47, 20 December, 2021
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. Conference marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Ukraine was held in Kiev on December 17, organized by the Armenian Embassy, the Armenian community and the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine.
The conference touched upon the history of the bilateral relations, the ways that will contribute to improving the relations between Armenia and Ukraine.
Armenia’s Ambassador to Ukraine Vladimir Karapetyan addressed the conference participants, highlighting the fact that the Ukrainian foreign ministry also participated in the organization of the event. He said that the foreign ministries of Armenia and Ukraine make efforts for the bilateral ties to be as warm as the relations between the two nations are. However, he noted that the diplomats still have a lot to do in order to make the relations between the two countries in accordance with the expectations of the Armenian and Ukrainian citizens.
Other events are also expected to take place on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Armenia-Ukraine diplomatic ties.
The Armenian authorities don’t pay visits to Nagorno-Karabakh, and I won’t be surprised, if later they refuse to visit Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex in order to please Turkey. This is what President of the International Center for Human Development NGO, political scientist Tevan Poghosyan told reporters today.
According to him, Turkey won’t renounce its preconditions in any way. “The re-election of the incumbent authorities secured more losses and failures for us Armenians,” Poghosyan said.
The political scientist added that Armenia failed to overcome a tremendous number of crises and challenges that existed in the past and escalated even more and emerged after the new authorities came to power. “I’m referring to the financial crisis and the crisis in diplomacy and security, and, in my opinion, the most important one if the moral-psychological crisis, which had an impact on each and every one of us. Moreover, all these crises continue to escalate,” Poghosyan clarified.
As of now, no country has applied for observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vahan Hunanyan told Armenpress.
The comments come in the wake of discussions on granting observer status to Azerbaijan.
“The procedure of granting an observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union is defined by Article 109of the 2014, May 29 treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union. Granting a status of an observer to any country requires a consensus decision, preceded by consultations within the Union aimed at finding out the economic appropriateness of that particular step,” Hunanyan said.
During the recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on December 10, the first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is also the honorary chair of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, said Azerbaijan could become an observer in the EAEU.
At a press briefing on December 15, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova positively assessed Nazarbayev’s proposal, stating that the cooperation of Azerbaijan and EAEU would contribute to boosting mutual trade and implementing large-scale infrastructure programs.
The Eurasian Economic Union comprises Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Moldova, Uzbekistan and Cuba hold an observer status in the Union.
Turkey appointed Armenian Genocide denier Serdar Kilic as special envoy on talks with Armenia
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has appointed Ankara’s former ambassador to the United States, Serdar Kilic, as it special envoy to negotiate the normalization of relations with Turkey, the country’s foreign minister announced on Wednesday.
A notorious denier of the Armenian Genocide, Kilic actively worked to thwart the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Congress. His efforts failed as both the House and the Senate overwhelmingly recognized the Armenian Genocide, setting the stage for President Joe Biden’s recognition this year.
Kilic was ambassador when Erdogan’s bodyguards violently beat up protesters in Washington during the Turkish president’s visit and meeting with former President Donald Trump. In fact, he impeded law enforcement operations at the time when he angrily confronted Washington police officers while the melee orchestrated by Erdogan was underway.
Calling him “a degenerate Armenian Genocide denier,” the Armenian National Committee of America posted a phot of Kilic yelling at a police officer during the 2017 protest in Washington’s Sheridan Circle.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday announced that Turkey and Armenia would appoint special envoys to oversee the normalization process, with Armenia’s Foreign Ministry welcoming the announcement and confirming Yerevan’s participation.
Armenia has not announced the appointment of an envoy.
On Wednesday a Turkish journalist Cetiner Cetin provided details about the Turkey-Armenia normalization process in his column in Haberturk.
He claimed that by January 15, 2022, Armenia will have set up a task force and another group that will be in contact with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
“There will be a three-step roadmap between Armenia and Turkey. First, chartered flights will be launched. The key issue during the negotiations will be the opening of the Turkey-Nakhchivan-Azerbaijan corridor. Ankara wants to see the opening of the corridor by May-June. The economic relations will be established in the third stage, which will be launched in July,” Cetin wrote in his column.
Ankara is considering bids from Turkish and Armenian airlines regarding the opening of Istanbul-Yerevan flights, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters following his visit to the UAE, the Anadolu Agency reported on Wednesday.
According to him, the applications of airlines are considered by the Ministry of Transport and the General Directorate of Civil Aviation of Turkey.
“Actually, the attitude of the Turkish side to the issue is positive. In the coming days, it will be determined which of the companies will be able to fly on this route,” Cavusoglu said.
By Orkhan Amashov
The Second Karabakh War sent a near-death blow to the beleaguered OSCE Minsk Group. Neither the trilateral ceasefire agreement that ended the hostilities nor subsequent documents signed within the same format, mentioned the organisation in question in any way, whether in a perfunctory or pro forma manner. But what would have been a coup de grace has yet not been delivered. Its ultimate fate remains unsealed.
The OSCE Minsk Group is, technically, alive. It reminded us of its existence throughout the war by making “peace-seeking” statements, which, as the old saying goes, were not worth the paper on which they were written.
Its co-chairs, despite not being formally invited by Baku, were received by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev after the end of the hostilities. The OSCE Minsk Group found it important to declare to the larger world, through its 13 April statement, that it retained the OSCE mandate to mediate and called for a “comprehensive and sustainable settlement on the basis of the elements and principles well-known to the sides”. The declaration, perhaps inadvertently, demonstrated the organisation’s inability to offer anything apart from vaguely worded proposals based on “normative ambiguity”.
There have been some meetings arranged under its auspices since the end of last year’s war. For instance, in late September, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met the co-chairs and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. Another OSCE-arranged meeting of foreign ministers, scheduled for December 4, did not take place, due to Baku’s last-minute change of mind caused by the illegal visit of Armenian MPs to Karabakh.
With Russia as Yerevan’s closest ally and the U.S. as the home of the largest Armenian diaspora in the world, the evenhandedness of the co-chair countries has been doubtful from the very outset. The inclusion of France did not help either. The latter was instrumental in replacing the term “the armed forces of Armenia” with “local Armenian forces” in the four UN Security Council resolutions passed against the occupation in 1993, which meant that the conflict would be considered not under the Chapter VII of the UN Charter as an act of aggression, but under the Chapter VI as a dispute that should be settled peacefully.
The perfidy lying at the heart of the French view of the conflict from its inception manifested itself throughout the years of fruitless negotiations and perhaps culminated in the fatal words of President Macron to the effect that, in the dramatic context that emerged after last year’s war, France sided with Armenia.
The impact of the consequences of the Second Karabakh War on the OSCE Minsk Group is massive. The November 10 ceasefire statement was the result of a military solution, whereas the process under the OSCE’s mandate was predicated on peace negotiations. Azerbaijan, by using its right to defend its sovereign territory under Article 51 of the UN Charter, compelled Armenia, through the application of military force, to withdraw from the occupied territories. This was also perfectly in line with the logic of the four UN Security Council resolutions, in which the Armenian military presence was referred to as “occupation”. Therefore, by behaving strictly in conformity with international law, Azerbaijan achieved a military solution to the protracted conflict, which was completely beyond the comprehension of the OSCE Minsk Group’s logic.
It is true that Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44-day war led to the crisis of relevance that the OSCE Minsk Group is currently facing. But Baku’s recourse to military means was the result of the meaninglessness of the peace process, which became particularly obvious when the new Armenian government, led by Nikol Pashinyan, explicitly repudiated the Madrid Principles, insisting on the inclusion of the unrecognised illegal Armenian regime as a party to the negotiations, without the participation of Azerbaijani citizens. This, coupled with Pashinyan’s cheap populism, which manifested itself in ill-thought public utterances, effectively meant a renunciation of the OSCE mediation by Yerevan.
Russia, which has been an inescapable actor in the Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations, is very comfortable with its central mediator role in the trilateral format, and thus not interested in the revival of the OSCE Minsk Group, which the US and France view as an instrument to re-establish themselves within the process. While the Kremlin upgraded its role in relation to the conflict from 2010 onwards, Washington and Paris did the reverse, they retrenched. Even if the two Western powers manage to recoup some of their influence, which may be possible to a certain extent for the U.S, and very unlikely in the case of France, it is not probable that the OSCE Minsk Group will evolve into an effective tool in their hands.
The OSCE Minsk Group was not a shining example of success throughout its almost 30-year existence, yet it behoves a fair-minded observer to acknowledge that, between 1997-2007, the period which perhaps was the heyday of the organisation, the co-chairs managed to put forward a couple of proposals, which were not entirely worthless.
But, if to consider a larger picture, the Minsk Group has outlived its unfulfilled purpose and thus is devoid of any meaningful reason to exist. It is an embodiment of creative inertia and a textbook example of how to spend a lot of resources on achieving nothing. Here is a candid quote from Richard Hoagland, who was an American co-chair of the Minsk Group in the past: “We stayed in five-star hotels where we were usually assigned suites on the executive floor that gave us access to a private dining room and full bar at no additional expense. We always sought out the best restaurants in the cities where we found ourselves. We lived well while we showed the OSCE flag and reminded Baku and Yerevan that the Minsk Group exists. But to be blunt, very, very little ever got accomplished.”
At present, the OSCE Minsk Group is experiencing what one may call, without any degree of exaggeration, an existential crisis, as it has been left with miniscule raison d’etre. It is now bankrupt and dead. Its terms of reference are archaic. To date, there have been very little signs suggesting that the co-chairs have come to terms with the new post-war reality. Their statements have been indicative of the urge to remain relevant.
It remains to be seen if the OSCE Minsk Group will manage to conclusively readjust itself through reform and the renewal of purpose, and consequently play any substantial part in post-conflict resolution. Yet what happens to be more or less certain is that its future role is not going to be anywhere near to what it had been prior to last year’s war.
Several circumstances behind the loss of the Khtsaberd and Hin Tagher villages of Hadrut region of Nagorno-Karabakh are state secret, and today it is necessary to refrain from making any disclosure. This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said in response to deputies’ questions in parliament today.
According to him, Armenia has already launched a criminal case regarding the fact that the Khtsaberd and Hin Tagher villages are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, as well as the capture of Armenian servicemen by the adversary. Nevertheless, as the Prime Minister stated, it never became possible to detain one of the key figures involved in this criminal case.
“Nevertheless, there are questions. Overall, I must say that the opposition, which has some ideas and interests, is formulating proposals, the responses to which may give way to different types of speculations. Many details contain state secret,” Pashinyan emphasized and refuted the allegations according to which the authorities have initially decided to transfer the mentioned villages.
“If this was the case, Armenian soldiers wouldn’t be there,” the politician said.