19:33,
YEREVAN, MARCH 25, ARMENPRESS. Armenia announced its starting lineup for the Euro 2024 qualifier against Turkey due in Yerevan tonight at 21:00 local time.
The starting lineup: Arsen Beglaryan, Varazdat Haroyan, Taron Voskanyan, Ugochukwu Iwu, Eduard Spertsyan, Lucas Zelarayan, Tigran Barseghyan, Kamo Hovhannisyan, Norberto Balekian, Georgi Harutyunyan, Nair Tiknizyan.
Another post-Soviet country, part of the CSTO’s Kremlin military bloc, has joined the states that will be required to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Moscow Times reports.
On Friday, March 24, the Constitutional Court of Armenia approved the ratification by the Parliament of the Rome Statute, the main document governing the work of the ICC.
As the Constitutional Court ruled, the obligations enshrined in the Rome Statute do not contradict the Constitution of Armenia. The decision is final and comes into force from its publication.
More than 120 countries, including those in the CIS, are members of the ICC and recognize its jurisdiction – including the duty to detain persons in respect of whom the court has issued arrest warrants.
Among them is South Africa, where Putin was invited to the BRICS summit scheduled for August. A decision on the Russian president’s trip to South Africa “has not yet been made,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Previously, he called the ICC warrant “legally void” and stressed that Russia does not recognize the court’s decision.
On March 22, the Brazilian authorities warned about the possible arrest of Putin in the event of a visit. Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said that the Russian president “undoubtedly faces the consequences” if he plans to visit the country.
IN PERSON
RSVP
Join us for an afternoon of art and music. Following a tour of Janyak: Armenian Art of Knots and Loops by exhibition curator Gassia Armenian and opening remarks by UCLA’s Narekatsi Chair of Armenian Studies Peter Cowe, enjoy one of Armenia’s leading folk singers, Hasmik Harutunyan, who will perform with UCLA ethnomusicology candidate Armen Adamian, who will play the duduk, a traditional woodwind instrument. Light refreshments will be served in the courtyard.
2:30 pm: Opening remarks
3:00 pm: Exhibition walk-through
3:30 pm: Musical performance
This program is co-sponsored by the Armenian Music Program at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
Armen Adamian is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at UCLA. His research examines the aesthetic dimensions and political implications of folk music in the post-Soviet Republic of Armenia. Alongside his academic work, Adamian is the co-founder and artistic director of the LA-based Armenian folk revival ensemble Lernazang, and instructor of UCLA’s Armenian Music and Dance Ensemble.
Gassia Armenian is the curatorial and research associate at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where she conducts collections research and facilitates curatorial and scholarly endeavors. She also liaises with domestic and international institutions, private collectors and lenders to the Fowler, and manages various aspects of planning and organizing the museum’s exhibitions and publications. Over the past 25 years, Gassia has helped to mount many exhibitions at the Fowler. Prior to that, she served as a consultant and project coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development for Junior Achievement of Armenia, developing and implementing civics education training programs and teaching methodologies.
Peter Cowe is Narekatsi Distinguished Professor of Armenian Studies and director of the UCLA Center for World Languages. His research interests include: Late Antique and medieval Armenian intellectual history, the Armenian kingdom and state formation across the medieval Mediterranean, Muslim-Christian dialogue, and modern Armenian nationalism. The author of five books in the field and editor of 10, he is the past co-editor of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies and has served on the executive board of the Society for Armenian Studies and Association Internationale des Études Arméniennes. A recipient of the Garbis Papazian Award for Armenology, he has been inducted into the Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan and awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the Russian-Armenian University of Armenia.
Hasmik Harutyunyan is a renowned singer of Armenian folk music and a Meritorious Artist of the Republic of Armenia. A student of folk revivalist Hayrik Muradyan, Harutyunyan was a member of the Akunq Azgagrakan Ensemble and is a co-founder of the Shoghaken Folk Ensemble. She has recorded several albums for Traditional Crossroads of New York and Face Music of Switzerland. Her record Armenian Lullabies was recognized by the New York Times as one of the best world music recordings in 2004. Hasmik has published a collection of Armenian lullabies titled, Ororner–Lullabies, and a collection of traditional Armenian folk songs for children titled, Arev, Arev, Yek, Yek. Currently, Hasmik is mentoring the LA-based ensemble Lernazang and directing workshops for UCLA’s Armenian Music and Dance Ensemble.
Opening Program: Join us to hear from exhibition curators, participating artists, and other key players who make possible our presentations of world arts and cultures.
Parking available in UCLA Lot 4, 198 Westwood Plaza, directly off Sunset Blvd; $3/hr or max $15/day. Rideshare drop-off at 305 Royce Dr.
Image credit: Marie Pilibossian, Armenian needle lace, early to mid-20th century; thread and needle used as a knotting tool; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X80.1162; Gift of Marie Pilibossian
https://fowler.ucla.edu/events/opening-program-janyak-armenian-art-of-knots-and-loops/
Armenian football fans gathered on Saturday for the Euro 2024 qualifier match with arch-foe Turkey in Yerevan, years after the two countries first resorted to "football diplomacy" to heal their historical animosity.
Shouting "Armenia, forward!" some two hundred members of the local fan club, Red Eagles, gathered in central Yerevan before kick-off later in the day.
Fans then lit coloured flares, threw firecrackers and beat drums as they marched towards the Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium.
In the crowd forming outside the 14,000-capacity stadium under the pouring rain, many blew vuvuzelas and waved Armenia's red-blue-orange national flags.
"We are in a fighting mood, we have come for a victory," a Red Eagles' member Karen Antonyan, 36, told AFP.
"The spirit and passion of our players will help them to prevail over the strong and experienced adversary."
Another fan, 20-year-old Mane Zurabyan said she was confident in her team's win.
"We will help our team with our crazy energy, the stadium will tremble from our shouts and applause," she said.
All tickets were sold for the match, but citing security concerns, the governing body of football in Europe, UEFA, has banned Turkish fans from attending the qualifier in Yerevan.
Armenian fans were equally banned from the return fixture to be played in Turkey in September.
Hovik Arustanyan, 46, said he believed his team's success depended on "whether our footballers will manage to forget politics and concentrate on the game."
Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.
Their relationship is strained by World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, atrocities Yerevan says amount to genocide.
The two countries first played each other in Yerevan in 2008 in attendance of Turkey's then-president Abdullah Gul.
In 2009 Armenia's leader Serzh Sarkisian travelled to the Turkish city of Bursa to watch a second game between the two countries.
Commonly referred to as "football diplomacy" the matches marked the beginning of a diplomatic normalisation process, which has yet to bring tangible results.
mkh-im-brw/iwd
WASHINGTON, DC – As Azerbaijan’s siege of Artsakh passed the 100-day mark this week, a bipartisan group of 69 US Representatives, led by Congressional Armenian Caucus founding co-chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ), once again called for ending military aid to Azerbaijan and sending $150 million in assistance to Artsakh and Armenia, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
The request comes in the form of a letter to Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations Chairman Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL) and Ranking Member Barbara Lee (D-CA), who have already begun drafting the US House version of the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) foreign aid bill.
“Continued US military aid to Azerbaijan represents a free pass for Azerbaijani aggression, a greenlight for Azerbaijani escalation,” said ANCA executive director Aram Hamparian. “It should have stopped on day one with President Biden, who entered office as a sharp critic of arming and aiding Aliyev. But, if our President won’t do what’s right, Congress needs to act.”
Joining Chairman Pallone in co-signing the letter are Representatives: Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Don Beyer (D-VA), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), Salud Carbajal (D-CA), Tony Cardenas (D-CA), Joaquín Castro (D-TX), Judy Chu (D-CA), David Cicilline (D-RI), Lou Correa (D-CA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-CA), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Robert Garcia (D-CA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Brian Higgins (D-NY), Jim Himes (D-CT), Steven Horsford (D-NV), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Jared Huffman (D-CA), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA), Dan Kildee (D-MI), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Mike Levin (D-CA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), James McGovern (D-MA), Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Kevin Mullin (D-CA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Richard Neal (D-MA), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Katie Porter (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), John Sarbanes (D-MD), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Darren Soto (D-FL), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Dina Titus (D-NV), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Paul Tonko (D-NY), Lori Trahan (D-MA), and Susan Wild (D-PA).
The letter includes the following budgetary requests:
— $100 million for security, economic, governance, and rule of law assistance to Armenia
— $50 million for Artsakh to provide a comprehensive assistance strategy and support the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh in their rebuilding and resettlement efforts – along with an additional $2 million for humanitarian demining and UXO clearance.
— The suspension of all US military and security aid to Azerbaijan and a State Department assessment of potential sanctions against Azeri officials found to have supported human rights abuses and war crimes.
— Language supporting the Administration’s efforts to secure the release of Armenian POWs illegally held by Azerbaijan.
Over 50,000 pro-Artsakh advocates used the ANCA action platform writing, tweeting and calling their US Representative to co-sign the Congressional letter.
The full text of the Armenian Caucus letter is provided below and available online.
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Dear Chairman Diaz-Balart and Ranking Member Lee:
We write to thank the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs for your longstanding support of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). This includes the important language you incorporated into the Fiscal Year 2023 bill, providing $60 million in funding for Armenia, $2 million in demining assistance for Artsakh, and an assistance strategy for addressing the humanitarian needs from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We ask that you build on these historic investments by considering the inclusion of the below provisions that will help strengthen America’s standing with partner countries in the region and hold Azerbaijan accountable for its ongoing hostilities in Artsakh and Armenia, including the ongoing blockade of the Lachin Corridor. The blockade has intentionally deprived Artsakh’s 120,000 Armenians of essential good, including food, fuel, medical supplies, electricity, and internet access.
Robust U.S. Assistance in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)
Azerbaijan’s inhumane blockade of Artsakh has left the region’s Armenian population on the brink of a humanitarian crisis and threatens to have lasting consequences on the region’s security. These cruel actions are taking place as the people of Artsakh continue to face severe hardships caused by the deadly 44-day war Azerbaijani forces launched in 2020. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 88 percent of the approximately 90,000 refugees displaced to Armenia were women, children, and the elderly. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also acknowledges that an “acute humanitarian crisis” continues for many of these families, including those who have been able to return to Artsakh. Unfortunately, the assistance provided to date by the U.S. government is wholly insufficient to address the overwhelming needs of these people.
The U.S. has historically promoted peace in Artsakh through U.S. government-funded landmine and unexploded ordnance clearance efforts and enabled rebuilding by investing in humanitarian assistance initiatives. We are requesting the State Department and USAID to deliver on the humanitarian assistance strategy mandated in the FY23 Appropriations Bill that lives up to our American humanitarian commitments. This vital package would help provide Armenian refugees with the aid, housing, food security, water and sanitation, health care, rehabilitation, and demining/UXO clearance they need to reconstruct their communities, rebuild their lives, and resettle their homes.
We urge you to include the following provisions in the body of the foreign aid bill:
· Of the funds appropriated under this heading, not less than $2,000,000 shall be made available for assistance in Nagorno-Karabakh to provide humanitarian demining and UXO clearance and $50,000,000 shall be made available to support rebuilding and resettlement efforts by Armenian victims in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as address the long-term consequences of Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor. Such assistance will help to meet basic human needs, including maternal healthcare, drinking water programs, as well as food and energy security and access to internet.
Security, Economic, and Governance Assistance for Armenia
The United States remains uniquely positioned to make important diplomatic advances in the South Caucasus. This is especially true in Armenia, an ancient nation with a modern democracy that continues to make democratic reforms in a region dominated by autocratic leaders. Providing significant assistance to Armenia will help make it more secure, bolster its democracy, sustain economic development, and stabilize its civil society. Providing security assistance to Armenia at this time is especially important as the Armenian people seek international assistance in protecting their sovereignty in the face of a constant Azerbaijani expansionism and authoritarianism.
This critical investment will build on past support for Armenia and Artsakh by the Subcommittee and will help strengthen the U.S.-Armenia strategic partnership, solidify our presence, and grow our influence in the region. We request the following language be included in this legislation:
· Of the funds appropriated by this Act, not less than $100 million shall be made available for Armenia prioritizing security assistance, economic development, private sector productivity, energy independence, democracy and the rule of law, and other purposes.
Prohibition on U.S. Military Aid to Azerbaijan and Sanctions
Despite assurances by the State Department that U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan has not materially aided aggression against Armenia and Artsakh, it is abundantly clear that the continued waiver of Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, amidst Azerbaijan’s unabated policy of aggression, has emboldened this violent pattern of behavior.
President Ilham Aliyev began his brutal 2020 assault on Artsakh not long after receiving over $100 million in security assistance through the Section 333 Building Partner Capacity Program in Fiscal Years 2018 and 2019. Azerbaijani forces used advanced Turkish drones, cluster munitions, and white phosphorus to indiscriminately attack homes, churches, and hospitals that killed thousands during the 44-day war. While a ceasefire halting the war was signed in November 2020, Azerbaijani forces continue their aggressive behavior in the region. This includes an assault on Armenia’s sovereign territory in September 2022, which saw Azerbaijani forces occupy over 50 square miles of territory and perpetrate horrific war crimes such as the execution of unarmed Armenian prisoners of war.
The blockade of the Lachin Corridor that Azerbaijan imposed on December 12, 2022, is designed to deny the region’s Armenian population access to essential humanitarian goods and clearly highlights the Aliyev regime’s unwillingness to seriously negotiate a fair, lasting peace deal. It is imperative that our government stops rewarding behavior that undermines our interests in ensuring a negotiated settlement for this crisis and that we respect the fundamental rights of Artsakh’s vulnerable Armenian population.
The Section 333 funding, along with other U.S. funding to Azerbaijan through the IMET and FMF programs breaks with an over two-decades long policy of parity in security assistance to Armenia and Azerbaijan, significantly increasing American support for the authoritarian Aliyev regime. In fact, according to a January 31, 2022, report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the State Department likely violated Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act in sending this and other assistance to Azerbaijan from 2014 to 2021. They did so by not properly consulting and communicating with Congress on what processes they used to determine whether U.S. aid to Azerbaijan could be used for offensive purposes against Armenia.
Holding Azerbaijan accountable is long overdue and must begin with Congress encouraging the Administration to fully enforce Section 907, restricting the Administration’s authority to waive this law, and enacting statutory prohibitions on any new or pending U.S. military or security aid to Azerbaijan. Congress must also urge the Administration to provide a report on Azerbaijan’s eligibility for military assistance under the Leahy Laws. We request that the following language be included in the final SFOPs bill:
· None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available under this Act may be provided to the Government of Azerbaijan through U.S. military or security assistance programs. To inform the reevaluation of any future security assistance to Azerbaijan, the Secretary of State is directed to provide a report on Azerbaijan’s eligibility for military assistance programs under existing statutes. Additionally, the Secretary of State is directed to develop and submit to the Committee on Appropriations an assessment of the eligibility of Azerbaijani officials involved in the commissioning of human rights abuses and war crimes under existing statutes.
Armenian Prisoners of War and Captured Civilians
On November 9, 2020, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia signed a tripartite statement to end the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, where all parties agreed that the ‘‘exchange of prisoners of war, hostages, and other detainees as well as the remains of the fatalities shall be carried out.” However, the Government of Azerbaijan continues to detain an estimated 130 Armenian prisoners of war, hostages, and detained persons, misrepresenting their status to justify their continued captivity. We request that the following language be included in the final SFOPs bill:
· The Committee is concerned by Azerbaijan’s failure to immediately return all Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians and, thus, (2) urges the Secretary of State to continue engaging at all levels with Azerbaijani authorities, including through the OSCE Minsk Group process, to make clear the importance of adhering to their obligations, under the November 9 statement and international law, to immediately release all prisoners of war and captured civilians.
Again, thank you for your leadership on the Subcommittee. We appreciate your consideration of these requests.
Sincerely,
An exhibition marking the 144th birth anniversary of Aram Manukyan, a devotee of the Armenian national liberation movement, a public figure of the First Republic of Armenia, the founder of the newest Armenian statehood and an ARF party member, launched at the Stepanakert Palace of Culture and Youth in Artsakh on Wednesday.
The exhibition was organized by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Artsakh Republic, Artsakhpress reported.
Artsakh's Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Norayr Mkrtchyan delivered opening remarks at the event.
"Today, being present at the event dedicated to the 144th anniversary of the birth of Aram Manukyan, the founding father of the First Republic of Armenia, and talking about his heroic life, whose geography stretches from Baku to Kars, from Van to Yerevan, we can implicitly confirm that Aram Manukyan has left for us and the future generation a message of the greatest national bio-moral importance, that is, to rely only on our own strength, never to be discouraged, to continue the struggle for freedom and independence until the victorious end," the minister noted.
The exhibition runs for two weeks.
The fifth round of the 23rd European Women Chess Championship was played on Wednesday.
Armenia’s Mariam Mkrtchyan and Polina Kobak celebrated victories, the Armenian Chess Federation said.
The games of Elina Danielian, Lilit Mkrtchian and Anna Sargsyan ended in a draw.
Lilit Mkrtchian and Elina Danielian scored 4 points out of 5.
Yerevan [Armenia], March 24 (ANI): Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday announced that there will be a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on joint official statements adopted at the highest level. The PM said: "There won't be a new escalation.""There will be a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and it will be based on the joint official statements adopted at the highest level. There won't be a new escalation! The international community must strongly support this narrative," the Armenian PM tweeted on Thursday.
US State Department's Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel in response to the development said the US is encouraged by the progress made toward lasting and sustainable peace in the South Caucasus.
He said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is engaged in facilitating peace discussions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
"@SecBlinken is very engaged in facilitating peace discussions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we are encouraged by the progress made toward lasting and sustainable peace in the South Caucasus. We very much appreciate @NikolPashinyan's message on that progress," Patel tweeted on Friday.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have engaged in two wars in the more than 30 years both ex-Soviet states have been independent.
Thousands of lives have been claimed in fighting for the control of Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated enclave of Karabakh.
According to Al Jazeera, a fragile truce has been in force between the neighbours since a 2020 war that left more than 6,500 dead and forced Armenia to cede territories it had controlled for decades.
Recently, Azerbaijani troops and ethnic Armenians exchanged gunfire in Azerbaijan's contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, killing at least five people.
As per Azerbaijan's defence ministry, two servicemen were killed after Azerbaijani troops stopped a convoy suspected of carrying weapons from the region's main town to outlying areas. It said the convoy had used an unauthorised road.
Armenia's foreign ministry said three officials from the Karabakh interior ministry were killed. The convoy had been carrying documents and a service pistol, it said, dismissing Azerbaijani allegations that weapons were being carried as "absurd", Al Jazeera reported.
It said Azerbaijan's version of events was a "provocation planned in advance and instructed by the top leadership". (ANI)
International diplomacy in the Caucasus is picking up speed as Armenians brace for what many believe will be a new Azerbaijani offensive.
In the last several days United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has called the leaders of both countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hosted his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Moscow, Iran’s deputy foreign minister visited Yerevan and France’s foreign minister announced plans for an April visit to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It comes as Azerbaijan is making ever more specific threats to Armenia based on unconfirmed “provocations” that Baku is blaming Yerevan for. The two sides are increasingly digging in on the most contentious issue between them: the fate of the Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani blockade of the only road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world, known as the Lachin Corridor, is now more than three months old with no end in sight.
Blinken called Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on March 20, and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev the next day. According to the State Department readout, Blinken “reaffirmed the importance of reopening the Lachin corridor to commercial and private vehicles.” At a Senate hearing later in the week, Blinken characterized his conversation with Aliyev as “pressing” the Azerbaijanis to reopen the road.
Aliyev’s readout struck a more combative tone; he repeated the standard denial that there was a blockade at all, citing the Red Cross and Russian peacekeeping vehicles that are allowed to pass. He further argued that 10,000 Armenian military personnel are in Karabakh in contravention of the ceasefire agreement that ended the 2020 war. The figure of 10,000 was a new one and it’s not clear where it came from.
Most remarkably, the Azerbaijani leader implicated the European Union monitoring mission in abetting the “provocations” he attributed to Armenia, in particular alleged arms transfers from Armenia to Karabakh. The Armenian side “had been recently abusing the presence of the European Union's mission in this country to pursue a policy aimed at deliberately escalating the situation,” Aliyev told Blinken.
In a bellicose speech a few days before the conversation with Blinken, Aliyev reiterated his position that the fate of the Karabakh would be the subject only of negotiations between local Armenians and the Azerbaijani government, but he did so in newly aggressive terms.
“There is one condition for them [Armenians] to live comfortably on an area of 29,000 square kilometers [the size of the Republic of Armenia] – Armenia must accept our conditions, officially recognize Karabakh as the territory of Azerbaijan, sign a peace treaty with us and carry out delimitation work according to our conditions,” he said. “Only under these circumstances can they live comfortably on an area of 29,000 square kilometers.”
It all only reinforced the sense, which has been building for weeks now, that an Azerbaijani offensive is imminent.
But Blinken’s assessment, in the Senate hearing, was rosier. He put the emphasis on the peace negotiations, despite the fact that they appear to have stalled. “There is an opportunity, I don’t want to exaggerate it, but an opportunity to bring a peace agreement to fruition,” he said in response to a question from pro-Armenian Senator Robert Menendez. “This is not something we are imposing on Armenia, we are answering the strong desire expressed by Armenia to help them reach an agreement which would help them end … thirty-plus years of conflict.”
It was a tone that Pashinyan then echoed – somewhat incongruously, given the dire warnings he has been issuing.
“There will be a #peace treaty between #Armenia and #Azerbaijan, and it will be based on the joint official statements adopted at the highest level, he tweeted on March 23. “There won’t be а new escalation! The international community must strongly support this narrative.”
The statement was rewarded by an approving quote tweet from the State Department:
While the two sides have been exchanging draft peace deals, the pace of high-level meetings has slowed down, the last one being in mid-February between Aliyev, Pashinyan, and Blinken on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
The process has been complicated by the two dueling tracks of negotiations: one led by the EU with support from the U.S., and the other led by Russia. While both Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to favor the Western track, Russia is impossible to ignore given its large footprint in the region, including the large peacekeeping mission that has operated in Karabakh since 2020.
The highlight of Lavrov’s March 20 meeting with Mirzoyan was a discursion by the Russian diplomat about how the Karabakh issue should be resolved. Azerbaijan has been arguing that the status of the Karabakh Armenians is an issue only between them and the Azerbaijani government, and that correspondingly they should not be part of any international negotiations.
Armenia, by contrast, has been insisting on an international guarantee for the rights and security of the Karabakh Armenians in whatever deal it signs with Azerbaijan. In recent weeks Yerevan has been more explicit about what that could entail, including an international (i.e. not only Russian) presence in Karabakh and a demilitarized zone.
The Europeans and Americans have not explicitly weighed in on this issue, but Lavrov did. He said that the issue should be the subject of negotiations between Baku and Stepanakert – in short, the Azerbaijani position – but then went on to approvingly cite examples of other cases in which minority rights were guaranteed by international agreements, seeming to imply that the rights of Karabakh Armenians could be similarly established.
But the examples he chose were curious ones: eastern Ukraine, where the Minsk agreements that Russia and Ukraine signed had provisions on local self-governance; and Kosovo, where the governments of Serbia and Kosovo agreed on some rights for the Serb minority there.
Lavrov described the principle of minority rights thusly: “The right to their native language, the right to teach their children in that language, live and work using that language, maintaining their culture, religion, having the right to self-governance and some sort of special links to their compatriots. In the case of Donbass, that was Russia.”
Leaving aside the details of the situation in eastern Ukraine, Lavrov’s explanation in this context seemed to imply that those rights should be afforded to the Karabakh Armenians, and that Armenia would be the “compatriots” in this scenario.
While there was no official reaction from Baku, a headline in the pro-government analysis website Minval.az referred to “Lavrov’s strange statement on Karabakh.”
And while it hewed closer to Armenia’s position, the response from Yerevan also was lukewarm. Edmon Marukyan, an ambassador-at-large who works on the Azerbaijan brief, suggested that Donbass and the Serbian communities of Kosovo were not good comparisons, he said: Karabakh had long enjoyed a special status in the Soviet Union, while those other territories never did (unlike other examples Lavrov could have, but didn’t choose, like Crimea, Abkhazia, or South Ossetia).
“Hence, while looking for a solution to the NK problem, the International Community should take into account the entire historical legal-political background, otherwise any solution built upon irrelevant examples will lead to the deepening of the problem and its non-resolution,” Marukyan wrote in a tweet.
The next round of diplomacy may, in any case, be on the Russia track; Lavrov said that he was working on arranging a meeting with himself, Mirzoyan, and their Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.
The Armenian Constitutional Court has recognised that the country’s International Criminal Court (ICC) obligations enshrined in the Rome Statute do not contradict the national constitution, News.am reports.
The ruling was read out by the court’s President Arman Dilanyan. It enters into force immediately.
The move means that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for children’s rights Maria Lvova-Belova will not be able to enter the country as Armenian authorities will be required to detain them following the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova.
News.am notes that the Armenian government appealed to the Constitutional Court to ratify the Rome Statute in late 2022 in order to hold Azerbaijan accountable for the crimes committed in unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh.
The country signed the statute back in 1998 but failed to ratify the document after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2004 that several provisions were not in line with the national constitution that was active at the time.
The International Criminal Court headquartered in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against Putin and Lvova-Belova on 17 March. Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation”, the ICC press release reads. Lvova-Belova is suspected of the same crimes.
Hungarian authorities noted that they would not arrest Putin under the ICC order if he sets foot in the country. Hungary signed and ratified the Rome Statute that lays foundations for the ICC but the document “was not built into Hungary’s legal system”, the Hungarian prime minister’s office stressed.