Author: Hagop Kamalian

Putin, Macron discuss the issue of involvement of extremists in NK conflict zone

Hagop Kamalian

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 18:31, 7 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS.  At the initiative of the French side, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the situation over Nagorno Karabakh was discussed inter alia, ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Kremlin.

‘’During the discussion of the situation over Nagorno Karabakh serious concern was expressed over the ongoing large-scale clashes in the conflict zone, as well as the more active involvement of extremists from Syria and Libya in the clashes.

Vladimir Putin presented to Emmanuel Macron the measures taken by Russia for immediate cessation of fire and resumption of negotiations aimed at a political and diplomatic solution.

The sides reaffirmed readiness to continue coordinated mediation efforts between Russia and France, including in the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group’’, reads the statement.

In addition, referring to the recent terror acts in France, the sides emphasized the determination to fight against terrorism.

Robert O’Brien speaks about involvement of mercenaries in NK conflict by Turkey

Hagop Kamalian

Robert O’Brien speaks about involvement of mercenaries in NK conflict by Turkey

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 22:46,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 30, ARMENPRESS. United States National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien says that despite the denial of Turkey, there is many information that Turkey sends Syrian mercenaries to Nagprno Karabakh conflict zone, ARMENPRESS reports Robert O’Brien said in a meeting with the representatives of the Armenian community in Los Angeles.

”Azerbaijan has used its oil money that has gained over the last several years to by more advanced weapons and they have technical and advisory support from Turkey. Despite Turkish denials that they made to me personally, there are credible reports that Turkey has deployed fighters from Syria’s opposition, the Syrian National Army”, he said.

Existence of Artsakh’s population not possible under Azerbaijani jurisdiction– MFA spokesperson

Hagop Kamalian

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 22:54,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The Foreign Ministry of Armenia reaffirms the position that the existence of the population of Artsakh is not possible under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan, ARMENPRESS reports Anna Naghdalyan, spokesperson of the Foreign Minister of Armenia, said in a press conference.

‘’The announcements of the Azerbaijani president and the actions of the Azerbaijani armed forces that we witness show that the goal of Azerbaijan is to evict Armenians from Artsakh, exterminate the indigenous people of Artsakh and Azerbaijan wants Artsakh without its indigenous people. The existence of the population of Artsakh is not possible under the Azerbaijani jurisdiction’’, she said, adding that since the 1st day of the war Azerbaijan committed war crimes against the people of Artsakh, including the use of cluster munition against civilians.

Azerbaijani air force bombs town of Martakert in Artsakh

Hagop Kamalian

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 17:30,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani military is bombarding the town of Martakert in Artsakh. The State Service of Emergency Situations of Artsakh said Azerbaijan has deployed air force in targeting the town.

“At midday, around 14:20, the Karegah village of Kashatagh region was bombarded by the Azeri armed forces from Grad multiple rocket launchers, and then they shelled the Karegah-Berdzor road. There are no victims among the peaceful population,” the service said adding that material damages have occurred.

“There are no military facilities anywhere around here. The Azerbaijani forces are currently again bombing Martakert. Their air force is deployed over the town,” the service said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

CivilNet: 71 Missiles Landed in Iran in One Day as a Result of the Karabakh War

Hagop Kamalian
CIVILNET.AM

05:25

Aliyar Rastgou, the Deputy Minister of Political and Security Affairs of Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan Province said more than 70 missiles fell near the Iranian border town of Khoda Afarin on October 22 as a result of fighting in Karabakh conflict

According to ParsToday, a statement by Rastgou said that, “Fortunately, the missiles struck the agricultural areas of the neighboring villages of Khoda Afarin and did not cause any human casualties or financial losses.”

Rastgou added that during the prior 24 days of Karabakh conflict, a total of 68 missiles landed in Iran. But on October 22 alone, there were 71 missiles.

He also stated, “Iranian Border Guard Command has taken the appropriate steps to ensure Iran’s safety and the Azerbaijan and Armenian sides have been given serious warnings to prevent repeating such incidents.”

Iran has been closely minoring the situation on its borders since fighting broke out between neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenians in Karabakh.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is seriously and with high sensitivity monitoring the moves at the bordering areas of Iran and declares that any aggression against our country’s territories by any party engaged in the (conflicts in the) region will not be tolerated and we seriously warn all sides to show necessary caring in this regard,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh had said earlier. 

At the same time, Iran’s government has offered to mediate in the conflict. “We call on both sides to exercise restraint, to end the conflict immediately and to resume negotiations,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Chatibsadeh.

Tehran wants to prevent the conflict from spilling over into Iranian society. Iran is home to both an Armenian and an Azerbaijani minority.

TURKISH press: Azerbaijan slams Pashinian’s call to arms, dismissal of diplomatic solution

Hagop Kamalian
 ISTANBUL DIPLOMACY 
OCT 21, 2020 4:15 PM GMT+3
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pauses as he speaks at the Armenian parliament in Yerevan, Armenia, Sept. 27, 2020. (AP File Photo)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy adviser, Hikmat Hajiyev slammed Wednesday Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s call to arms and dismissal of diplomatic solutions to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Earlier in the day, Pashinian urged citizens to sign up as military volunteers to protect their country and claimed “Azerbaijan’s aggressive stance” in the 25-day clash over Nagorno-Karabakh leaves no room for diplomacy.

Hajiyev said the statement reflects Armenia’s lack of interest in a diplomatic solution and disrespect the efforts of international mediators.

The disputed Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory. The Azerbaijani military has been fighting to end the illegal occupation by Armenian separatists, while Armenian forces continue indiscriminate attacks on Azeri civilians.

In a live video address on Facebook, Pashinyan said all Armenians must “take up arms and defend the Motherland” and urged local mayors to organize volunteer units.

He charged that Azerbaijan’s “uncompromising posture” has shattered hopes for a political settlement. “There is no way now to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh issue through diplomacy,” Pashinian said.

“In this situation, we may consider all hopes, proposals and ideas about the need to find a diplomatic settlement effectively terminated.”

Pashinian said Azerbaijan’s stance on Nagorno-Karabakh effectively means the region surrenders.

“There is no Armenia without Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinian said. “Defending Nagorno-Karabakh means defending the Armenian people’s rights,” he added, despite the fact Armenian occupation of the region is illegal.

On Friday, Armenia and Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers are due to meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington. On Wednesday they held separate talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of Armenian separatists, backed by Armenia, since a war there ended in 1994. The current fighting that started on Sept. 27 marks the biggest escalation in the conflict since.

Two Russia-brokered cease-fires frayed immediately after entering force, and the warring parties have continued to trade blows with heavy artillery, rockets and drones.

According to Armenian separatists, 834 of their troops have been killed, while Azerbaijan has said 63 civilians were killed and 292 wounded.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said that to end hostilities, Armenian forces must withdraw from the illegally occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinian’s statements came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held two separate meetings with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts in Moscow to discuss the implementation of a cease-fire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“During the talks, urgent issues related to the implementation of previously reached agreements on a cease-fire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone and the creation of conditions for its sustainable settlement were discussed,” the ministry said in a statement, following Lavrov’s meeting with Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Jeyhun Bayramov.

Azerbaijani authorities said at least 60 civilians have been killed and 270 wounded since Sept. 27, but they haven’t revealed military losses.

The number of houses damaged in Armenian attacks has reached over 1,700, along with 90 residential buildings and 327 civil facilities, according to Azerbaijani officials.

Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.

Turkey has supported Baku’s right to self-defense and demanded a withdrawal of the occupying forces.

Asbarez: Pompeo to Meet with Mnatsakanyan, Bayramov on Friday

Hagop Kamalian

October 19,  2020



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a press briefing on Oct. 14

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to meet with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Jeyhun Bayramov in Washington on Friday, POLITICO reported on Monday, adding that “the visits also offer the Trump administration a chance to showcase an attempt at global leadership just days before President Donald Trump faces reelection.”

According to U.S. government documents seen by POLITICO, Bayramov will meet first with Pompeo on Friday morning., with Mnatsakanyan scheduled for a meeting “shortly afterward.”

Ideally, he said, the two countries can resume meaningful negotiations soon. Armenia’s ambassador in Washington, Armenia’s Ambassador to the U.S. Varuzhan Nersesyan, praised Pompeo for calling out Turkey over its support for Azerbaijan during the conflict, telling POLITICO that ideally Armenia and Azerbaijan can resume “meaningful negotiations.”

“We see no alternative to the peaceful resolution of this conflict based on mutual compromises,” Nersesyan told POLITICO.

“We want a substantive conversation,” Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to the U.S. Elin Suleymonov told POLITICO. He also did not rule out the possibility of “an encounter” between Mnatsakanyan and Bayramov while they are in Washington.

Trump on Sunday visited Newport Beach where hundreds of Armenian-American called on the administration for decisive action on Artsakh. At a rally in Carson City, Nevada later in the day, Trump acknowledged what he called Armenian “supporters,” saying “we’re working on something great,” presumably referring to the Karabakh war.

Azerbaijani drone strikes pick off Karabakh artillery

Hagop Kamalian
Yahoo! News
Oct 17 2020

The red mulberry trees meant to conceal them were not enough: Azerbaijani night-time drone strikes destroyed seven artillery guns in a field in Karmir Shuka, in southeast Nagorno Karabakh.

Armenian separatists had towed the guns down off the road, around 20 or 10 metres (yards) from each other, hooked up to trucks, their barrels down, out of firing position.

But the pinpoint strikes at 2:00 am on Friday picked them off.

“We were not in an offensive action,” said Onik Mnatsakanian, a major with the Armenian army deployed in the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno Karabakh.

“We were deployed and waiting, but we were attacked,” he told AFP journalists.

The Azerbaijani strikes, powerful and accurate, reduced the trucks to piles of scrap metal.

Everything around the vehicles in a five-metre radius was incinerated, but no one was killed or even injured — because they quickly got their soldiers out of harm’s way when they heard the approaching drones, said Mnatsakanian.

The surrounding mulberry trees, whose fruits go into a famous local vodka, were reduced to tree stumps and a few charred branches.

And the field, about the size of a football pitch, was scattered with debris from the strikes: bits of blackened metal, twisted or sheared off, pieces of bodywork, a piston here, the remains of seat there, shells intact and in fragments.

There were also the remains of the soldiers’ possessions, abandoned when they scrambled to safety: a sandal, the remains of a Kalashnikov rifle bayonet, a tin of food, a khaki cap.

– An unequal fight –

“The enemy uses very accurate Turkish and Israeli drones,” said Mnatsakanian. And that made it an unequal fight given the mainly Russian weapons at the disposal of the Armenian fighters, he added.

The village of Karmir Shuka sits about 20 kilometres (12 miles) back from the front line, with roads leading to Martuni and Hadrut, where the fighting has been fierce since the conflict erupted on September 27.

At around noon, rumours of another drone in the vicinity began circulating. An officer arrived and quickly ordered two lorries towing artillery that escaped the night-time strikes away from the mulberry grove.

On the road to Hadrut, military lorries, ambulances and 4x4s move as quickly as they can.

Around 50 soldiers in fatigues and carrying their weapons, are trudging back from Hadrut in small groups, heading back to the village to rest after having been relieved.

Their faces are lined with fatigue, the sweat stands out on their brows, they move at a slow pace under the blazing sun. 

Down below them, down in the mulberry grove, near the still smoking carcasses of tyres and burning tree branches, a family of pigs rummages through the blackened, churned earth.

epe/jj/har


https://news.yahoo.com/azerbaijani-drone-strikes-pick-off-164322009.html

Century-old genocide looms large for Armenians as Turkey weighs in on Nagorno-Karabakh

Hagop Kamalian
Fox News
Oct 8 2020
By Amy Kellogg | Fox News

The genocide of 1915 looms large as Armenians feel renewed fear and bitterness about Turkey’s involvement in the newly inflamed situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey and Armenia still fight about history, with Ankara disputing there ever was a genocide.   But the death of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans is in large part responsible for the creation of the diaspora.  There are more Armenians who live outside their country than within it.  

And Armenian President Armen Sarkissian tells Fox News his people have no intention of giving up rights to live freely in Nagorno-Karabakh.

PRO-ARMENIA PROTESTERS SHUT DOWN HOLLYWOOD TRAFFIC, DEMAND SUPPORT IN CONFLICT WITH AZERBAIJAN

“This is a fight they will fight a long time, until the death as they say.  Every Armenian in the world will support this fight for a simple reason.  They see another attempt at genocide by Turkey using Azeri hands.”

Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian-populated enclave within the confines of the state of Azerbaijan.

The dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh goes back decades but the flare-up within the last two weeks seems to have rattled people within the region and beyond because it threatens to suck some larger regional players into the conflict, like Russia and Iran, both neighbors.

So far, they have called for calm.  And Azerbaijan bristles at the suggestion that Turkey’s involved militarily.

“Turkish support to Azerbaijan is moral, diplomatic and political support,” said Hikmat Hajiyev, Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, “and we see the Armenian side tries to over-exaggerate it and put it in the context of a 3rd party involved.  From the Azerbaijan side, we don’t need any third party involvement.”

There have also been allegations that Turkey has employed mercenaries to fight.

“It has become, it is becoming, a great regional conflict with the potential of becoming another Syria or a big change in geopolitics because Turkey has brought with them also mujahedin–terrorists, Islamic terrorists–into Azerbaijan,” Sarkissian said.

Azerbaijan disputes this.

“Azerbaijan doesn’t need any foreign mercenaries,” Hajiyev said. “We have capable armed forces.  And they have interoperability with NATO forces.” He points out how Azerbaijani troops have worked side by side with American troops in conflicts like Afghanistan and helped facilitate American supply routes in the region, adding the bit about mercenaries is “just another propaganda piece against Azerbaijan.”

But Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has said some of his countrymen have gone to join the fight, which gets Russia and Iran nervous.

Sarkissian said those countries have a role to play in helping to restore peace.  As does the US.

“I would like to use this opportunity to wish President Trump and the First Lady good health,” he said. “And it’s important President Trump return fully to his responsibilities for the Americans and for elections that are coming up, but it’s also important he brings his contribution today because we in Armenia, in Karabakh, cannot wait until the American elections.  We need American words and pressure on Turkey and Azerbaijan today.”

While both sides accuse the other of ethnic cleansing, atrocities and land grabs, representatives of each do say at least they believe they could all live together peacefully one day.  Hajiyev points to how different cultures have co-existed in Azerbaijan.

“We are proud of our Jewish culture, our Jewish community, as prosperous.  Christians and Muslims are living side by side in prosperity.  We always suggested this model of peaceful co-existence to Nagorno-Karabakh as well but unfortunately, Armenia followed a different model, of aggression.”

But no amount of denying Turkish involvement can convince Armenia’s President that there isn’t a grand scheme here.  He thinks Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took advantage of a moment when the world was thinking of COVID-19 and economic crises to make his move.  At a time, Sarkissian said, when were in the middle of “the big fight for the survival of humanity.”  He called it inhuman.

The Armenian President added, if successful here, “Turkey will have a huge influence over what’s happening there and will have control over international energy resources.  So somehow Europe will become a hostage of Turkey, closing or opening pipelines and Central Asia will become a hostage.”

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Nagorno-Karabakh itself does not have oil, but it is a land that is considered by Armenians to be one of the key cradles of Christianity and the Azerbaijanis value it as a center of culture and beauty.  Tens of thousands have died for this over the years and counting, with this latest round of hostilities claiming hundreds so far.

Over in Azerbaijan, Hikmat Hajiyev said, “Generations are changing, but this conflict is still resisting.  Youngsters are dying on this battleground.  Enough is enough.”