Friday,
CIA Director Visits Armenia
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - CIA Director William Burns at a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, .
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met with Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials during a surprise visit to Yerevan
on Friday.
In a short statement, the Armenian government said Pashinian and Burns discussed
“international and regional security,” “processes taking place in the South
Caucasus” and “the fight against terrorism.”
The statement gave no other details of the meeting which was also attended by
Armen Abazian, the head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS).
Burns also held separate talks with Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s
Security Council.
The council’s press office reported that Grigorian briefed him on the Armenian
government’s peace efforts and security challenges facing the region. It said
the two men discussed Yerevan’s ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan and Turkey
“in this context.”
Burns had visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as U.S.
deputy secretary of state. He urged at the time a greater “sense of urgency” for
the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the status quo is
not sustainable.”
His latest trip to Yerevan coincided with an official announcement that the
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will meet in Tbilisi on Saturday.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets CIA Director William Burns,
Yerevan, .
The trip was first revealed by the Russian news agency Sputnik earlier in the
day. It said the CIA chief arrived for unspecified “high-level meetings” and
will spend only several hours in the country.
The Armenian authorities did not confirm or deny the report before issuing the
official press releases on Burns’s meetings. An NSS spokesman told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service that he has “no information” about his visit.
The U.S. Embassy likewise declined to comment. No CIA director has ever visited
Armenia before.
Tigran Grigorian, an independent political analyst, claimed that U.S. and
Russian security officials arrived in Armenia in recent days for confidential
talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.
“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or
Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with
Russia,” Grigorian said. “According to my information, Russian and American
experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit
could be put in that context.”
Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia
from 2005 to 2008.
CIA Director ‘Visiting Armenia’
• Sargis Harutyunyan
US - CIA Director William Burns gestures as he speaks during a House
Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats in Washington, D.C., April
15, 2021.
The Armenian and U.S. governments on Friday did not deny reports that Central
Intelligence Agency Director William Burns is making an unannounced visit to
Armenia.
Citing unnamed sources, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported that Burns
arrived in Yerevan in the morning for unspecified “high-level meetings.” He will
spend only several hours in the country, it said without giving other details.
A spokesperson for Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service that he has “no information” about the alleged trip.
Other Armenian government agencies refrained from commenting on it. The press
office of the government’s Security Council did not answer phone calls
throughout the day.
The U.S. Embassy said, for its part, that it has no comment on the Sputnik
report. No CIA director has ever visited Armenia before.
According to Tigran Grigorian, an independent political analyst, U.S. and
Russian security officials arrived in Armenia in recent days for confidential
talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.
“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or
Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with
Russia,” Grigorian said. “According to my information, Russian and American
experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit
could be put in that context.”
Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia
from 2005 to 2008.
Burns visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as U.S.
deputy secretary of state. During that trip, he urged a greater “sense of
urgency” for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the
status quo is not sustainable.”
Armenian Government Critic Dies During Trial
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Entertainment producer and government critic Armen Grigorian.
A vocal critic of Armenia’s government arrested two months ago died during his
trial in Yerevan on Friday, sparking outcry from the country’s human rights
ombudswoman and opposition leaders.
Armen Grigorian, a well-known entertainment producer, collapsed in the courtroom
as his lawyer petitioned the presiding judge to release him from custody.
Grigorian, 56, was pronounced dead by an ambulance crew that arrived at the
scene about 10 minutes later.
“They took resuscitation measures but to no avail,” Taguhi Stepanian, the head
of the national ambulance service, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Stepanian said a forensic examination will ascertain the cause of Grigorian’s
sudden death.
Grigorian, who for years harshly criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, was
arrested and indicted on May 18 in connection with a 2021 video in which he made
disparaging comments about residents of two Armenian regions sympathetic to the
government. The National Security Service accused him of offending their
“national dignity.”
Grigorian as well as opposition figures and other government critics rejected
the accusations as politically motivated. They said the fact that he is held in
detention pending investigation only proves that he is a political prisoner.
Human rights activists also criticized the criminal proceedings. Some of them
linked the case to daily antigovernment protests launched by the Armenian
opposition on May 1.
The state human rights defender, Kristine Grigorian (no relation to Armen),
expressed outrage at the antigovernment activist’s death, saying that he clearly
did not receive adequate medical care in prison. She said she has demanded
“clarifications” from prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice, which runs
Armenia’s prisons.
“I will be consistent in bringing the culprits to justice,” the ombudswoman
wrote on Facebook.
Neither the ministry nor the law-enforcement authorities issued any statements
on Armen Grigorian’s death as of Friday evening.
Grigorian’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, said that his client, who was a medic by
education, suffered from serious “health problems.”
“He never let us speak up about those problems in the court and other bodies,”
Melikian said, speaking at an opposition rally in Yerevan held in the evening.
Armenia - Opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelian speaks at a rally in Yerevan,
.
Organizers and participants of the rally observed a minute of silence in memory
of Grigorian. Some of them also held his pictures.
Opposition leaders addressing the crowd blamed the authorities and Pashinian in
particular for the outspoken public figure’s death.
“Armen Grigorian died at the hands of these authorities with the direct
participation of the investigator, the judge and the prosecutor acting on their
orders,” one of them, Ishkhan Saghatelian, charged.
The demonstrators chanted “Nikol murderer!” as they marched to the prime
minister’s office and a Yerevan court that sanctioned Grigorian’s arrest in May.
Many of them lit candles and laid flowers outside the court building.
Over the past year, the opposition has regularly accused Pashinian’s
administration of weaponizing pre-trial arrests to try to neutralize its members
and supporters fighting for regime change.
More than two dozen such individuals are currently under arrest on charges
stemming from the continuing antigovernment protests. Most of them are accused
of assaulting riot police. The authorities maintain that the accusations are not
politically motivated.
West, Russia Again Welcome Turkish-Armenian Dialogue
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Austria - Turkish and Armenian officials hold a fourth round of normalization
talks in Vienna, July 1, 2022.
The United States, the European Union and Russia have welcomed apparent progress
made in ongoing negotiations on normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations.
The U.S. State Department reaffirmed strong support for the normalization
process in response to the first-ever phone call between Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that took place on
Monday.
“The Armenian-Turkish dialogue has the potential to increase regional stability,
curb adverse influences and lead to greater economic development that is
beneficial to all,” the Armenian Service of the Voice of America quoted the
department as saying on Wednesday.
Andrea Wiktorin, the head of the EU Delegation in Yerevan, on Friday described
Pashinian’s call with Erdogan as a “very important step.”
“I hope that it will really lead to a normalization process that will benefit
both countries,” Wiktorin told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“We are ready to continue to accompany the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, providing
it with all kinds of assistance,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman,
Maria Zakharova, said for her part. “We believe that this is in the interests of
stability and economic prosperity in the region.”
Speaking at a news briefing on Thursday, Zakharova emphasized the fact that the
first round of Turkish-Armenian normalization talks took place in Moscow on
January 14.
Special envoys of the two neighboring states met for three more times in Vienna
in the following months. Their last meeting held on July 1 was followed by an
announcement that Ankara and Yerevan will open the Turkish-Armenian border to
citizens of third countries and allow mutual cargo shipments by air “at the
earliest date possible.”
The Armenian negotiator, Ruben Rubinian, expressed hope on Tuesday that the
Turkish side will implement these agreements “in the coming months.”
Ankara has for decades made the opening of the border and establishment of
diplomatic relations with Yerevan conditional on a resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.
French-Armenian Leader ‘Denied Entry To Armenia’
France - President Emmanuel Macron, Mourad Papazian (right) and other
French-Amrenian leaders visit the Armenian genocide memorial, Paris.
A leader of France’s influential Armenian community critical of Armenia’s
government was reportedly detained at Yerevan airport and deported back to Paris
early on Thursday.
“As soon as I arrived in Yerevan I was arrested, placed in a small room, then in
a transit zone, and my passport was confiscated,” Mourad Papazian said in a
Facebook post on his return to the French capital.
“I knew that I was banned from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Today, I am banned from
[Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinian's Armenia,” he wrote.
Papazian said immigration officers at the Zvartnots international airport gave
no reason for his deportation. He claimed that it was ordered by Pashinian.
Armenia’s government and National Security Service (NSS), which is charge of
border control, did not comment on what was a rare entry ban slapped on a
prominent Armenian Diaspora figure.
Papazian is one of the two co-presidents of the CCAF, a coalition of leading
French-Armenian organizations. He is also a member of the worldwide governing
Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a pan-Armenian
party in opposition to Pashinian’s government.
Dashnaktsutyun’s organization in Armenia has been at the forefront of regular
street protests launched this spring by the country’s main opposition groups
trying to topple the prime minister. Papazian reportedly took part in one of
those rallies during a recent trip to Yerevan.
In a statement, the Dashnaktsutyun Bureau condemned his expulsion, linking it to
recent arrests and prosecution of over a dozen party activists involved in the
antigovernment protests. It charged that Pashinian is also trying to please
Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The entry ban was also denounced by Ara Toranian, the other CCAF co-president
and the publisher of the Paris-based magazine Nouvelles d’Armenie.
“Should this arbitrary measure be attributed to [Papazian’s] political
position?” Toranian wrote on its website. “If this were the case -- and one
cannot imagine other reasons -- this expulsion would constitute a serious threat
to the freedom of opinion of the Diaspora Armenians and an attack on democracy.”
Writing on Facebook hours before boarding the flight to Yerevan, Papazian said
he is leaving for Armenia to make a “big announcement for September.” He did not
elaborate.
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.