18:23,
YEREVAN, MAY 17, ARMENPRESS. On May 18, around 5:20 p.m., the units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces violated the ceasefire by firing a mortar at the Armenian position located in the Norabak sector, Gegharkunik Province.
As ARMENPRESS was informed from MoD Armenia, the Armenian side has no casualties.
As of 18:00, the situation on the frontline is relatively stable.
The President of Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia have held talks in Brussels facilitated by the President of the European Council Charles Michel. This positive development saw progress on border and transportation issues after earlier talks with President Michel stalled when Armenia refused to participate in a meeting last December, writes Political Editor Nick Powell.
Charles Michel’s efforts to help Azerbaijan and Armenia agree to a lasting peace were put on hold at the end of last year when Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to attend a further meeting in Brussels with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. But patience by the European Union -and by Azerbaijan- has been rewarded with a meeting that went ahead on 14 March.
It seems that some progress was made in Brussels in the dispute between the two countries. It is primarily over the Karabakh region, which lies within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised boundaries but has brought devastation to a much larger area during two major wars, causing widespread human misery and economic disruption. After the meeting, the Azerbaijan Ministry of Defence reported that its military positions in the Kalbajar region had come under mortar fire from Armenia’s armed forces.
Nevertheless, the leaders confirmed that they would meet again next month, together with President Macron of France and Chancellor Scholz of Germany, during the European Political Community summit in Chisinau, Moldova. The two sides didn’t offer a detailed readout of their talks in Brussels but President Michel provided some commentary.
“Our exchanges were frank, open and results-oriented”, he said. “Following the recent positive talks in the United States on the peace treaty, the momentum should be maintained to take decisive steps towards the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan”.
“On border issues, we reviewed progress and the next steps regarding the delimitation of the border”, he added. Charles Michel also reported good progress on unblocking transport and economic links “in particular on the reopening of the railway connections to and from Nakhchivan”.
In an interview with EU Reporter last month, Elchin Amirbayov, who is Assistant to the First Vice-President of Azerbaijan, spoke of his expectation that President Michel would soon resume his role as a facilitator of peace talks. Mr Amirbayov saw the reconstruction of the railway through Armenia linking Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan as an important confidence-building measure.
It could form part of the Middle Corridor between Asia and Europe, he argued, enabling Armenia to benefit from this increasingly important trade route once a sustainable peace reopened its borders with both Azerbaijan and Türkiye. He said his country was offering Armenia a ‘win-win’ strategy, not a victor’s peace.
“With it, Armenia will benefit even more because it will be open to investment, for example, from the countries around it”, explained Mr Amirbayov. “It would be considered as a relatively stable place which is not actually risking any new confrontation with its neighbours”.
The Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs later confirmed that the Brussels talks had included the delimitation of borders and the restoration of communications. It stressed the extreme importance of the acceptance by Armenia of the internationally recognised territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
It said that the meeting also provided an opportunity to discuss humanitarian issues, especially included the importance of clarifying the fate of missing persons and of speeding up the process of clearing minefields. Azerbaijan remained ready to continue dialogue and interaction with international partners to achieve normal relations with Armenia.
https://www.eureporter.co/world/azerbaijan-world/2023/05/14/armenia-returns-to-negotiating-table-after-refusing-talks-with-azerbaijan-in-december/
16:08,
YEREVAN, MAY 15, ARMENPRESS. Observers from the EU monitoring mission (EUMA ) were not present on the ground during the latest Azerbaijani aggression in the direction of Sotk, Armenia, but the observers later visited the area, prepared a report and sent it to Brussels, Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin said at a press conference when asked whether there is a report from EUMA on the latest aggression.
The reports are not shared with Armenia or Azerbaijan, she added.
“But, as the mission is accompanied by the officers of the Ministry of Defense, the Armenian side is well aware of what they see. Naturally, they cannot be everywhere. So, they can only monitor something, then they report back to Brussels. But they cannot report on things that they have not seen. Which is a rather logical element. So far with the latest incursion and hostilities they were not present on the ground… when the incursion happened. You have quite a long border and there is a schedule of the patrols. It is also not an intention that they had to be there while something happens. They are monitoring the border and they see what they see around the border, but it does not mean that they are actually on the spot when something happens,” Wiktorin said when asked on the Azerbaijani aggression in Sotk.
Asked if the observers weren’t supposed to visit the area where an escalation had happened, Wiktorin said: “They had the opportunity later, after it was done, but you also have to see that the Armenian side has a responsibility for the security of the monitors, there can be also moments when we are advised to refrain from visiting a certain spot in a certain moment, but then afterwards they went and they made their own assessment which goes directly to Brussels.”
On May 12, Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenian positions deployed near Sotk and Kut, using mortars and UAVs. One Armenian soldier was killed.
18:10,
YEREVAN, MAY 10, ARMENPRESS. On May 10, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan met with Igor Khovaev, the Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the special representative of the Russian Foreign Minister for supporting the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
As ARMENPRESS was informed from the Security Council of Armenia, Armen Grigoryan and Igor Khovaev discussed the latest developments in the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Secretary of the Security Council presented to the interlocutor the positions of the Armenian side on a number of issues of the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.
Referring to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, the parties stressed that the rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh should be respected and protected. The Russian side emphasized that the Lachin Corridor should be opened and operate within the framework of the November 9 tripartite declaration.
15:10, 2 May 2023
YEREVAN, MAY 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is involving over $236,000,000 in loan for the construction of the North-South Road Corridor in Syunik Province. The loan will be used for the construction of a 32-kilometer long tunnel and 17 bridges in Kajaran and two tunnels in Meghri and Litchk.
The bill on ratifying the agreement was presented in parliament on May 2.
The agreement was signed between the government of Armenia and the Eurasian Development Bank.
It is planned to start construction this year.
The bill also seeks to extend the term of the loan agreement until 30 December, 2026 and increase the size of co-financing by 86,6 million dollars, thus the project’s budget will stand at 236 million 681 thousand dollars.
Aykhan Hajizada, a spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Trend that talks between Jeyhun Bayramov of Azerbaijan and Ararat Mirzoyan of Armenia are still ongoing in the US.
Today’s meetings have already started. The discussions will go on tomorrow. Unknown is the precise period when the negotiations will end, he continued.
A peace pact is the primary subject of negotiations, according to prior statements by Hajizada.
Jeyhun Bayramov, the foreign minister of Azerbaijan, met with Ararat Mirzoyan, the foreign minister of Armenia, and Anthony Blinken, the secretary of state of the US, on May 1 in the US.
The two countries’ foreign ministers then met bilaterally at the NFATC (Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Centre).
10:12, 2 May 2023
YEREVAN, MAY 2, ARMENPRESS. Dialogue is key to reaching a lasting peace in the South Caucasus region, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after hosting peace talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Washington D.C.
“Hosting peace talks this week with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov at our new facility at the George P. Schultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center. Dialogue is key to reaching a lasting peace in the South Caucasus region,” Blinken tweeted.
MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. The Armenian National Olympic Committee (ARMNOC) believes that politics has no place in sports and favors the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes to the international arena, ARMNOC Secretary General Grachya Rostomyan told TASS on Tuesday.
“The Armenian Olympic Committee is resolute in its stance that sports must be separate from politics,” Rostomyan said. “We are against what is happening today in the world of sports, against the ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes being part of the Olympic family and their participation in international tournaments.”
“For our part, we are ready to help in any way we can to bring back the Russian and Belarusian athletes,” he continued. “I recently addressed the International Olympic Committee, stating that sports serves as a humanitarian bridge that cannot be destroyed.”
“For instance, despite tense relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we traveled there in 2015 for the European Games in Baku and took part in all the events there,” Rostomyan noted.
He also stressed that Armenia was not engaged in poaching top Russian athletes, who are currently stripped of their right to compete internationally because of sanctions.
“Inviting Russians underhandedly by taking advantage of their admission problems is wrong and dishonorable and we have nothing to do with it,” the sports official said. “The Russian Olympic Committee [ROC] is our brother and it would never even occur to us to poach anyone.”
“Does someone really want to drive a wedge between us? I will reiterate that one shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for a dishonorable act on our behalf,” Rostomyan added.
At its session on January 25, 2023, the IOC Executive Board put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in international sports tournaments but only under certain conditions.
Athletes from the two countries should not be “actively supporting” Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status. Russia and Belarus were also banned from participating in international team events.
Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) President Stanislav Pozdnyakov called these recommendations absolutely unacceptable as they would lead to a split in Russian sports. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the IOC’s recommendations as discriminatory.
MOSCOW
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan on Friday discussed steps on normalizing relations between Baku and Yerevan.
The two ministers met on the sidelines of the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
“The importance of intensifying efforts on all tracks of Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization in accordance with the agreements of the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020-2022 was outlined,” it noted.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
A truce has been in force between the neighbors since a 2020 war that forced Armenia to cede territories it had occupied for decades.