Author: Nahapetian Samvel

                                        Friday, 
Top Russian General Visits Armenia
Armenia -- Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov (second from left), the deputy chief 
of the Russian military’s General Staff, meets with Armenian Defense Minister 
Vagharshak Harutiunian, Yerevan, .
A visiting top Russian general met with Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian 
on Friday for the second time in five days to discuss Russia’s close military 
ties with Armenia.
Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s 
General Staff, arrived in Yerevan on January 25 for what the Armenian Defense 
Ministry described as “staff negotiations” between the armed forces of the two 
allied states. Istrakov began the trip with separate meetings with Harutiunian 
and his Armenian opposite number, Colonel-General Onik Gasparian.
A Defense Ministry statement released on Friday, said Istrakov met with 
Harutiunian again to brief him on the results of the talks that touched upon 
“all directions of Russian-Armenian bilateral military cooperation.” They 
discussed joint activities planned by the two sides, the statement said without 
elaborating.
The Russian ambassador in Yerevan, Sergei Kopyrkin, met with Harutiunian and 
Gasparian on Thursday to congratulate them on the 29th anniversary of the 
official creation of the Armenian army.
Armenia -- Senior Armenian and Russian military officials start "staff 
negotiations" in Yerevan, January 25, 2021.
On Tuesday, Harutiunian inspected the main command post of a joint 
Russian-Armenian system of air defense protecting Armenia’s airspace. He was 
accompanied by a Russian Air Force general.
“Vagharshak Harutiunian stressed the need to deepen Russian-Armenian military 
cooperation, including in the area of air defense,” said the Defense Ministry.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian similarly announced plans to deepen 
Russian-Armenian relations in a televised address to the nation aired on New 
Year’s Eve He said his country needs “new security guarantees” after the recent 
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia already has close political, economic and military ties with Russia. It 
hosts a Russian military base and has long received Russian weapons at knockdown 
prices and even for free.
Moscow deployed 2,000 peacekeeping troops to Karabakh as part of a 
Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the war on November 10. In 
addition, it dispatched Russian soldiers and border guards to Armenia’s Syunik 
region southwest of Karabakh to help the Armenian military defend it against 
possible Azerbaijani attacks.
Court Upholds Acquittal Of Former Judge In Kocharian Case
        • Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- District court judge Davit Grigorian leaves the courtroom after 
ordering former President Robert Kocharian's release from prison, May 18, 2019.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals rejected on Friday prosecutors’ appeal against a 
lower court’s decision to throw out controversial criminal charges brought 
against a judge who had released former President Robert Kocharian from prison.
The judge, Davit Grigorian, presided over the ongoing trial of Kocharian and 
three other former officials when it got underway in May 2019. A few days later, 
Grigorian not only freed the ex-president but also suspended the trial, 
questioning the legality of coup charges brought against him.
The decisions angered political allies and supporters of Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian. Heeding Pashinian’s calls, hundreds of them blocked the entrances to 
court buildings across Armenia. Pashinian demanded a mandatory “vetting” of all 
Armenian judges, saying that many of them remain linked to the country’s 
“corrupt” former leadership.
Kocharian was arrested again in June 2019 after the Court of Appeals overturned 
Grigorian’s decisions. Three weeks later, law-enforcement officers searched and 
sealed the judge’s offices. A state body overseeing the Armenian judiciary then 
suspended Grigorian and allowed the Special Investigative Service (SIS) to 
prosecute him.
Grigorian denied the ensuing accusations of document forgery brought against him 
and his secretary. He described them as government retribution for Kocharian’s 
release.
Investigators denied any connection between the Kocharian case and Grigorian’s 
prosecution.
In June 2020, a Yerevan court of first instance threw out the case against 
Grigorian for lack of evidence even before starting the suspended judge’s trial.
The Court of Appeals upheld that decision, ruling on an appeal filed by 
Armenia’s prosecutor-general. One of Grigorian’s lawyers, Georgi Melikian, 
thanked it for the “principled judicial act.”
The judge who took over Kocharian’s trial later in 2019, Anna Danibekian, 
repeatedly refused to release the ex-president from custody pending a verdict in 
the case. In June 2020, the Court of Appeals overturned Danibekian’s decision to 
deny Kocharian bail and ordered him freed.
Kocharian, who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, rejects the coup and corruption 
charges leveled against him as politically motivated.
Top Judicial Official Hails Government Plans For New Judges
        • Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- A court building in Yerevan, June 9, 2020.
The head of a state body overseeing Armenian courts backed on Friday a 
government proposal to hire new judges who would deal only with corruption cases 
or pre-trial arrests of criminal suspects.
A bill approved by the Armenian government earlier this month calls for the 
selection of up to 21 such judges for the courts of first instance. Three other 
new judges specializing in arrests or corruption-related offenses would be 
appointed to the Court of Appeals.
Justice Minister Rustam Badasian said on January 14 that the new judges would 
reduce the workload of courts increasingly overwhelmed by pending criminal and 
civil cases. He said they should also hand down “more objective” rulings on 
arrest warrants demanded by investigators.
In recent months Armenian judges have refused to allow law-enforcement bodies to 
arrest dozens of opposition leaders and members as well as other anti-government 
activists. Virtually all of those individuals are prosecuted in connection with 
angry protests sparked by the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s handling of the 
autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian charged last month that Armenia’s judicial system has become part of a 
“pseudo-elite” which is trying to topple him after the disastrous war. Ruben 
Vartazarian, the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, rejected the 
criticism.
Critics of the government have expressed concern over its plans to install 
magistrates tasked with allowing or blocking pre-trial arrests. They claim that 
the government wants to make sure that courts stop hampering politically 
motivated investigations ordered by it.
The head of the Armenian Chamber of Advocates, the national bar association, 
echoed those concerns when he spoke with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Given past 
[court-related] events, I think that there are political considerations here,” 
said Ara Zohrabian.
Vartazarian disagreed. “The [new] judges will be selected by the Supreme 
Judicial Council,” he said. “It will be guided only by the law and will take 
into consideration only their professional skills just like it has selected 
other judges. I therefore rule out political decisions by those judges.”
Five Held Over Anti-Government Protest In Yerevan
        • Artak Khulian
Armenia -- Protesters demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's resignation 
clash with riot police outside the main government building in Yerevan, January 
28, 2021.
Law-enforcement authorities arrested five protesters who clashed with riot 
police while demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation on Thursday.
They were among several hundred people who rallied outside the main government 
building in Yerevan. The demonstration was organized by several nationalist 
activists holding Pashinian responsible for the outcome of the recent war in 
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Riot police used force against the protesters when the latter tried to break 
into the building that houses the prime minister’s office.
In a statement announcing the arrests on Friday, Armenia’s Investigative 
Committee described the protesters’ actions as an attempt to seize the building.
The law-enforcement agency said the five detainees are suspected of violating 
relevant articles of the Armenian Criminal Code. It did not identify any of them.
The organizers of Thursday’s protest are not known to be linked to a coalition 
of 17 Armenian opposition groups that staged a series of anti-government 
demonstrations late last year in a bid to force Pashinian to resign and hand 
over power to an interim government. The prime minister has rejected the 
opposition demands.
In a separate development, the National Security Service (NSS) arrested and 
indicted Vahan Badasian, a prominent war veteran from Karabakh who called for 
Pashinian’s ouster earlier on Thursday.
Badasian said that Pashinian will be removed from power “physically” and through 
an armed revolt if he keeps refusing to step down. “Let the NSS arrest me,” he 
told reporters at Yerevan’s Yerablur Military Pantheon.
The NSS said on Friday that Badasian has been formally charged with calling for 
a violent overthrow of the constitutional order. A Yerevan court was due to 
decide later in the day whether to allow investigators to hold him in pre-trial 
detention.
Badasian’s lawyer, Arayik Papikian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that his 
client rejects the accusation as politically motivated.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
 

Asia Times
[Incoming National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan suggests shifts in
China and Iran policies and more engagement with Russia]
By MK Bhadrakumar
January 5, 2021
In his first media interview, the incoming US national security
adviser, Jake Sullivan, has given a preview of the Joe Biden
administration’s foreign-policy directions in regard to Russia, Iran
and China.
Major shifts can be expected in the policies toward both China and
Iran, while selective engagement of Russia is in the cards.
Russia
Sullivan said it was “most likely” that Russia is responsible for the
massive cyberattacks on the US government system, critical
infrastructure and private-sector entities that have come to light
recently. He didn’t want to “telegraph our punches,” but forewarned
that Biden will impose “substantial costs” on Russia.
Biden will “choose his time and place” pending a thorough assessment
regarding the intent of the attack, how far and wide it had spread and
precisely what might result from it. Prima facie, this appears to go
beyond “random opportunities for espionage,” and downstream
destructive action cannot be ruled out.
Biden has told aides that from Day 1, cybersecurity will be “a top
national-security priority of his administration.”
However, Sullivan drew the analogy of the Cold War to point out that
even when the US and the Soviet Union arrayed thousands of nuclear
warheads against each other on “a hair-trigger,” and spoke in
existential terms about their competition with each other, there were
areas of cooperation – “more specifically, on arms control and nuclear
non-proliferation.”
Therefore, the US and Russia “can act in their national interests” to
advance an arms-control and strategic stability agenda amid today’s
tense relations. Sullivan disclosed that Biden has “tasked us to
pursue from right outside the gate” (after the inaugural ceremony on
January 20) the renewal of the New START agreement. He admitted that
the US will have to look at “extending that treaty in the interests of
the United States.”
Sullivan did not expand on this selective engagement with Russia to
include other issues (for example, Syria and Ukraine) or on the need
for cooperation to meet common challenges. But he did not use any
harsh language against “Russian aggression,” let alone call Russia a
“revisionist power.” Nor did he make any critical references to
Russian policies.
Sullivan’s remarks in a measured tone came only days after an unusual
gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to convey his
Christmas and New Year greetings to Biden, where he touched on the
“the importance of broad international cooperation” in the backdrop of
the Covid-19 pandemic and “other challenges which the world faced.”
Putin went on to express the hope that “by building a relationship in
the spirit of equality and consideration for each other’s interests,
Russia and the United States could contribute much to enhancing
stability and security at the regional and global levels.”
China
As regards China, Sullivan’s extended remarks signaled that Biden’s
approach will be radically different from that of Donald Trump’s
administration.
He criticized Trump for taking on China on its own, while also
“picking fights” with its allies and partners, whereas Biden intends
to “consult with our allies and partners” on how together they can
bring leverage to come to bear on China’s most problematic trade
abuses, including dumping, illegal subsidies for state-owned
enterprises, forced labor and environmental practices that hurt
American workers and farmers and businesses.
Sullivan exuded confidence that Biden’s extensive contacts with
lawmakers in Congress will help push through his China policies. “He
knows his mind on China and he is going to carry forward a strategy
that is not based on politics, not based on being pushed around by
domestic constituencies, but based on the American national
interests.”
Sullivan described it as a “clear-eyed strategy, a strategy that
recognizes that China is a serious strategic competitor to the US that
acts in ways that are at odds with our interests in many ways
including trade.”
At the same time, “it is also a strategy that recognizes that we will
work with China when it is in our interests to do so,” such as on
climate change.
To quote Sullivan, Biden’s strategy will be to work on “our sources of
strength here at home so that we can more effectively compete with
China on technology, economy and innovation, more effectively invest
in our alliances, so as to build up to develop leverages.”
As well, the US will be active in international institutions so that
it is the US and its partners and not China that are “calling the
shots at the key tables on issues ranging from nuclear
non-proliferation to international economics.”
Sullivan said Biden’s strategy will be rooted in a clear assessment of
the challenges the US faces, of America’s national interests, and what
are “the points of strength we can bring to bear in this competition.”
What Sullivan did not say merits careful attention too. Never once did
he mention Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy or the Quad. He completely
avoided any critical remarks about China or references to contentious
issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Tibet.
Sullivan’s characterization of China as a “serious strategic
competitor” differs sharply from the Trump administration’s projection
of China as a rival and irreconcilable enemy and aggressor. Indeed, he
spoke about the imperatives of engagement with China despite
differences.
Iran
Sullivan did not mince words to underscore that Trump’s “maximum
pressure” policy has been a spectacular failure insofar as Iran is
closer to a nuclear weapon today than before and its policies are
posing “continuing, ongoing concerns.”
Clearly, he said, the promises made by the Trump administration – that
the US would extract a better nuclear deal, stop Iran’s malign
behavior and so on – did not bear out. The assassination of Qasem
Soleimani showed that a strategy that is “so focused on one element of
American power and completely sets aside diplomacy” cannot ultimately
help attain the United States’ strategic objectives.
Sullivan reaffirmed Biden’s stance that if Iran comes back into
compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal – that is, reduces its
stockpiles and takes down some of its centrifuges – so that it is
“back in the box,” then the US will also return to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Significantly, he added: “And that will become the basis of follow-on
negotiation.” Sullivan flagged the following:
    Iran’s ballistic missile program “has to be on the table” as part
of follow-on negotiations.
    There could be conversations that go beyond the P5 + 1 and
“involve the regional players” as well.
    In that “broader negotiation,” we can “ultimately secure limits on
Iran’s ballistic-missile technology,” and that is what the Biden
administration will try to pursue through diplomacy “to address both
the nuclear file and a broader range of regional issues.”
Sullivan, who was instrumental in preparing the ground for the
negotiations leading to the JCPOA, noted that the very logic of the
2015 deal was that it would be narrowly focused on Iran’s nuclear
program, while the US would retain all its capacities – sanctions,
intelligence capability, deterrent capacity – to push back at Iran on
all other issues.
He said the US had made no assumptions that by going into the nuclear
deal, it would change Iran’s behavior on other issues. But what the US
estimated was that if it had the Iranian nuclear program “in a box, it
could then begin to chip away” at some of the other issues.
Sullivan regretted that the US did not pursue “clear-eyed diplomacy
backed by deterrence,” which was the hallmark of what produced the
JCPOA.
Having said that, “it was never fundamentally a part of the nuclear
deal that we had expectations.” Therefore, “as we move forward, we
will look at each of these issues in its own distinctive way, without
presuming that progress on one aspect will necessarily mean progress
on other aspects too.”
To be sure, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will
feel disappointed that the “maximum pressure” strategy is going to be
unceremoniously dumped, and renewed US-Iranian engagement is in the
cards.
Biden apparently sees no problem in associating Saudi Arabia and the
UAE with the forthcoming process of engagement with Iran, but it also
has a flip side insofar as Iran’s missile capability is its deterrence
against the massive arms build-up by those two countries as well as
Israeli belligerence.
Therefore, Iran will not agree to abandon its deterrent capability
unilaterally. And it is unlikely that Israel would disarm or that the
Saudis and Emiratis would agree to curtail their excessive arms
purchases. Arguably, the Western powers themselves may not be
enthusiastic about the highly lucrative West Asian arms bazaar drying
up.
Iran has reacted sharply to Sullivan’s remarks, saying, “as for Iran’s
defense capability, there has never been, there is none and there
won’t be any negotiation.” Suffice to say, the US will have to
incentivize Iran. A rollback of US sanctions, as provided under the
JCPOA, will be a step in that direction.
The bottom line is that Sullivan refrained from demanding any
renegotiation of the JCPOA. He has phrased it as a “follow-on
negotiation.” Now, there is going to be a great sense of urgency in
kickstarting negotiations. Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpiles now
vastly exceed the limit set by the JCPOA.
Iran also announced on Monday that it had already begun the
pre-processing stage of gas injection in the underground Fordow
nuclear site and the first UF6 enriched uranium would be produced “in
a few hours.”
*
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.