Hripsime Khurshudyan won the title of champion of Armenia and after a 6-year break celebrated her return to great sport with a victory (video).
In the 87 kg weight category, the 2016 European champion registered a result of 216 kg (99 + 117).
Mary Tumasyan (178 kg) won the title of vice-champion, Mariam Mkrtchyan (172 kg) won the bronze medal.
19:52,
YEREVAN, 27 JANUARY, ARMENPRESS. The US administration is committed to continuing to work closely with the Republic of Armenia in the areas of justice, the rule of law, and the strengthening of democratic institutions, ARMENPRESS reports Ambassador of the USA to Armenia Lynne Tracy said during the meeting with President of the Constitutional Court of Armenia Arman Dilanyan.
Dilanyan received Lynne Tracy on January 27. The Ambassador was accompanied by Kelly Strickland, USAID Deputy Director, Office of Democratic and Decentralized Governance, Alexis Haftvani, Head of the U.S. Embassy's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Welcoming the American colleagues, Arman Dilanyan highly valued the US-American cooperation, the continuous work on the implementation of the bilateral agenda in the judicial sphere. Arman Dilanyan noted that the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia has an ambitious agenda of internal reforms, is determined to implement it, and the assistance of international partners, including the United States, will further promote their successful implementation.
Ambassador Tracey thanked for the opportunity of the meeting, noting that the US administration is committed to continuing close cooperation with the Republic of Armenia in the areas of justice, the rule of law, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. In this context, Ambassador Tracey highlighted the internal reform process launched in the Constitutional Court.
During the meeting, the interlocutors exchanged views on the prospects of implementing joint programs.
ith a speed that is surprising almost everybody, Armenia and Turkey have started a process towards normalizing relations and opening their closed common border. The initiative has already produced one good outcome: direct flights will be resumed between the two countries in February. But there are still many ways in which it can unravel.
In twenty-first century Europe, the failure of modern Armenia and Turkey to establish relations looks like an unhealthy anomaly. When the Soviet Union ended, Turkey recognized newly independent Armenia but stalled on opening diplomatic relations. Since then the two countries have twice tried and failed to do a deal, in 1992-3 and 2007-10.
Both those initiatives failed because of the claims of Turkey’s kin state and ally, Azerbaijan. In April 1993, Turkey closed the border with Armenia after Armenian forces occupied the Azerbaijani region of Kelbajar during the first Karabakh conflict.
In 2010, Turkish prime minister—as he then was—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stepped back from endorsing the two protocols signed by the two foreign ministers the year before in Zurich, again in solidarity with Azerbaijan.
Could it be third time lucky in 2022?
The chief reason for optimism is that Baku is dropping its objections. When Azerbaijan recaptured the occupied regions in the war of 2020, Turkey’s formal reason for freezing relations was removed. Russia, which was equivocal about the Zurich Protocols process is also not standing in the way.
The Armenian and Turkish envoys held their first meeting on January 14 in Moscow. That raised a few eyebrows; the two sides are perfectly capable of meeting without any mediation and the Russia government has never been involved in this dialogue before, but it means that the Russians have a stake in the success of the process.
The new talks are a top-down process, led by Turkish President Erdoğan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Both have identified a national interest in it working. Neither, however, is a consensus-seeker, neither is consulting widely or reaching out to those with expertise in previous negotiations. The main Armenian negotiator Ruben Rubinyan is just thirty-one, with no experience in this brief, but happens to be a close confidante of Pashinyan.
The leaders thus far seem to be without a communications strategy to win over doubters. In Armenia, bitterness against Turkey is still raw because of Turkish military assistance to Azerbaijan in the war of 2020. As elections approach in Turkey, Erdoğan will be wary of alienating his ultra-nationalist de facto coalition partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), by seeking rapprochement with Armenia.
If the negotiations fail, it is most likely to be due to the Azerbaijan factor.
Although Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev welcomes the talks, he also wants to extract concessions from Armenia at its point of greatest weakness, following its military defeat in 2020. The Baku authorities want as much sovereign control as possible over a restored road and rail link connecting western Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan across Armenia, a route they call the Zangezur Corridor. If the Azerbaijani and Turkish presidents agree that securing the corridor over Armenian objections is a precondition for normalizing relations, the talks could fail.
The broader economic considerations suggest this could be a win-win. A consensus deal to reopen all the roads and railways closed by the Karabakh conflict of the 1990s would make Armenia and Azerbaijan the connecting point in a web of railways between Moscow, Istanbul, and Tehran.
Many studies have shown that Armenia would benefit hugely from seeing its western land border reopened, giving it much easier access to both Turkish and EU markets.
It is vitally important to stress one point: we are talking here about Armenia-Turkey normalization, not about reconciliation. A huge dark shadow hangs over this process: the deportation and extermination of almost the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16, the mass atrocity that most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide, but the enormity of which the Turkish government barely acknowledges.
No government in Yerevan has made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide a precondition for establishing relations. Much of the Armenian diaspora strongly disagrees. One prominent Californian Armenian columnist wrote on January 9, “An unrepentant genocidaire cannot be a trusted party with which one can negotiate in good faith.”
Others have their own reason to doubt. January 19 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink, the editor of Istanbul’s Armenian newspaper Agos.
Dink was a living embodiment of the best in Armenian-Turkish dialogue. He believed that the path to reconciliation and healing lay through the democratization of Turkey and an open dialogue in Turkish society about the dark page of its past that constituted the destruction of the Armenians. He worked to make this happen. But his own assassination—by a far-right nationalist, probably protected by elements of the security services— and the rollback of democracy in Turkey in the last five years have made that prospect much more distant. The continued detention—in open defiance of the European Court of Human Rights—of another champion of Armenian-Turkish relations, philanthropist Osman Kavala, is another indictment of the current Turkish regime’s commitment to genuine dialogue.
And yet, a top-down political process is still better than no process at all. If the closed border reopens, that will in and of itself stimulate thousands of people-to-people connections between Armenians and Turks. This is an initiative that, however flawed, deserves wide support.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
Kristinne Grigoryan was elected on Monday as the Human Rights Defender of Armenia. Grigoryan's candidacy had been nominated by the "Civil Contract" faction and was backed by the 68 votes of the lawmakers from the ruling force. Grigoryan will replace Arman Tatoyan who had served in the position since 2016.
Following the announcement of the results, Grigoryan took oath in the presence of the parliamentarians.
"By assuming the office of the Defender, I hereby swear to defend the human rights and freedoms of an individual and a citizen, remaining faithful to the Constitution and the laws of the Republic of Armenia and the principles of justice. I swear to exercise my powers impartially, in good faith and with due diligence," Grigoryan said.
To note, the Defender is elected by the National Assembly, upon recommendation of the competent standing committee of the National Assembly, by at least three fifths of votes of the total number of the members of the Parliament, for a term of six years.
To remind, the opposition factions boycotted the vote.
PARIS
The leader of a dissolved far-right group in France was sentenced to one year in prison, local media reported on Friday.
Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, the leader of now dissolved Zouaves Paris (ZVP), was sentenced to one year in prison over the June 2020 attack with baseball bats and tear gas at a bar in Paris.
He was banned from participating in demonstrations because of violence at a December rally by far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour last year and was detained on Thursday for joining an anti-vaccine demonstration on Jan. 15.
The ZVP was dissolved with a Cabinet decision on Jan. 5 over violence at Zemmour's rally.
In November 2020, Cacqueray-Valmenier had announced that he joined Armenian ranks in Nagorno-Karabakh to fight Azerbaijanis.
21:04,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian unit that completed its mission in the CSTO Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the Republic of Kazakhstan returned to Armenia on January 14, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Ministry of Defense.
100 servicemen of the Armenian Armed Forces were sent to Kazakhstan on January 7 as part of the CSTO peacekeeping force to carry out protection of strategic buildings and infrastructure.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in an interview with local media today voiced new threats and blackmail against Armenia.
He said that their policy is completely clear, both during the war and in relation to the settlement of the former Karabakh conflict and the future. He said that they offered both countries to recognize each other's territorial integrity, begin work on the delimitation of borders and on the process of opening communications, and sign a peace treaty.
Aliyev continued saying that the signing of a peace treaty, although not a 100 percent guarantee, minimizes the risk of war to a large extent in any case but they will continuously build up military power.
He added that they have many factors for not recognizing the territorial integrity of Armenia.
12:47, 8 January, 2022
YEREVAN, JANUARY 8, ARMENPRESS. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared January 10 a day of national mourning for the victims of the latest events across the country, the president’s spokesperson Berik Uali said.
On January 2, protests sparked in several cities of Kazakhstan. In several days, they escalated into mass riots and assaults at the bodies of authority in many cities. Thousands of people were injured, and there were casualties. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for assistance. CSTO peacekeepers have already commenced their mission in Kazakhstan. According to the authorities, the constitutional order in Kazakhstan was generally restored on January 7. The situation in Almaty remains the most complicated, reported by TASS.
While Brussels is keen to provide technical help and mediation, its role can only go so far.
A Brussels meeting between Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev on December 15 led to agreements including on restoring railway lines, the return of detainees and handing over minefield maps. Organised by the European Council’s President Charles Michel, the summit also highlighted the European Unions’ interest in supporting peace between the two countries.
However, Toivo Klaar, the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, told IWPR that while Brussels was keen to support the process on delimitation and demarcation of the state border, “in the end, it boils down to the political will in Baku and Yerevan”.
IWPR: The trilateral meeting in Brussels was a rare opportunity for the EU to assume the mediator’s mantle in this region. What does Brussels have to show for its efforts?
Klaar: It was the first such meeting in Brussels, but President Michel personally had been quite involved with both leaders since the early summer… the three leaders spent four and-a -half hours together. President Michel also enabled a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan and President Aliyev, which was a welcome sign.
What are the tangible results?
Prior contacts of President Michel with both sides [resulted] in the establishment of a hotline between the ministers of defence, which is used by both sides. We have had the release of prisoners of war [and] detainees and the handing over of maps of minefields. It’s obviously an ongoing process. There have been contacts with Russian officials, involving President Putin with the leadership of both countries, and similarly, with our American colleagues – and frequent contacts entertained by France. All of this is in one way or another contributing to the peace process.
What is the EU’s next objective regarding the border delimitation issue?
We are looking into how we can support the border delimitation process. We are willing to engage… in the process of reducing tensions on the bilateral border, through technical know-how and advice, and of course to the extent that the involved parties want us to be engaged. It will ultimately depend also on the two sides to say where [they] want the EU to be active, and President Michel offered technical assistance in form of an advisory group.
Was an advisory group something either Yerevan or Baku asked for?
Ultimately, in such a process what is required is for both sides to agree on a baseline from which to start working. I'm not sure that we are quite there yet. We have consistently heard that there is a desire for more EU engagement. The EU is genuinely interested in supporting the emergence of a South Caucasus that is that is peaceful, that is prosperous. We are a genuinely benevolent actor, that was our message. I think that is also recognized in Baku and Yerevan.
There are reports of calls to President Putin by both EC President Michel and French President Macron. Was it a coordinated effort?
There have been numerous phone calls between President Michel and President Putin. We want to follow up on the desire of the leadership of both countries to have the EU be engaged and we want to make sure that engagement is as productive and as result oriented as possible. It makes perfect sense to have regular contacts with others who also are strongly involved. But I think it would be too much to say that there is any kind of concentrated effort, division of duties or anything like that between the EU and Russia. In the end, we are pulling largely in the same direction. No contradiction, but no daily coordination either. That’s maybe a bit too much.
Could this be the case of the “dialogue with Russia” that western leaders so desperately want to have?
I think it depends very much on how Russia sees this. We think there is a win-win scenario that would allow everyone to benefit… From our side, this is something that that we can certainly see happening. We are genuinely interested in helping our partners reach a better state.
The terms detainees and prisoners of war have been used interchangeably, but President Aliyev says that people currently in detention “cannot be considered as prisoners of war”. You were on the plane when they were released. What’s the official EU interpretation?
Instead of delving deeper into semantics …we’ve said many times over that all of them should be released. There have been additional transfers of Azerbaijani and Armenian prisoners since the Brussels meetings, this is something we warmly welcome.
Both President Aliyev and PM Pashinyan claim “We want peace and it’s enough of war”. You’ve spoken to both, what is their interpretation of peace?
We are dealing with a very long and bitter history here. Both Armenians and Azerbaijanis can point at moments where they can consider that they have been badly treated, that their people have been killed and driven from their homes. When you keep [this] in mind, it is quite natural that both sides come at things from different perspectives. It will take time to arrive at some common understanding. There has been so much bad blood over so many years… But I think the important thing is, to have a desire to come to turn a page and to move forward in a positive direction. If the leadership in both countries stay true to their commitment, that this is the only way forward, it can be achieved. It will take time to, to come to the point where you say that, yes, we have suffered, but we understand also that you have suffered…. The leaderships have a very important role to play to guide their people.
There is no peace treaty, just a ceasefire. President Aliyev told El Pais that he hoped that “European partners will persuade Armenia”.
We believe that the comprehensive agreement that will address all the outstanding issues is necessary and this is something where we want to support the sides. And there is still also the Minsk Group and its co-chairs, so there are different avenues, there are different possibilities.
Could the EU make this happen? Does Brussels have the clout, the backbone, or even the interest to take it upon itself?
Allow me to turn the question around. Ultimately, any agreement is signed between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. So, we, as the European Union, can support. Ultimately, however, it is it up to them, to wish to move forward, to make compromises, any sort of comprehensive settlement will have to entail compromises regardless of what the outcome of the 44-day war was. To achieve a durable peace, there should be a just, fair settlement. In the end, it boils down to the political will in Baku and Yerevan.
With regards to the legal status of the Zangezur corridor, President Aliyev demanded reciprocity. Many in Armenia and Azerbaijan interpreted the statement President Michel issued after the meeting as agreeing with that sentiment. Is that the case at hand?
I believe that the wording of the statement was rather referring to railroads. Transit was discussed in detail, and it is quite natural to have a reciprocal approach. As for the legal status, the EU concentrates more on enabling physical connectivity rather than labeling anything. We have heard that there are plans in both [countries] to invest in making sure that this railway connection is built in the near future. I think that is a very good development.
Armenia tells its nationals in Kazakhstan to shelter in place as local authorities launch counter- terror operation
18:09, 6 January, 2022
YEREVAN, JANUARY 6, ARMENPRESS. Amid the violent unrest in Kazakhstan, the Armenian Embassy is advising all Armenian citizens who are currently in the country to shelter in place and follow safety guidelines set by local authorities.
The local government introduced a state of emergency and curfew (23:00 – 07:00).
“We strictly advise all citizens of the Republic of Armenia to maintain safety rules, avoid crowded areas and remain in your hotels or other place of residence,” the Armenian Embassy in Kazakhstan said in a statement.
Protest rallies against high fuel prices erupted on January 2 in Zhanaozen and Aktau in the Mangystau Region in southwestern Kazakhstan. Two days later, the protests engulfed Almaty in the country’s southeast and other cities where the protesters clashed with the police.
As of January 6, more than 1000 people were wounded across the country.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that “terrorists” were seizing buildings, infrastructure and small arms and are battling security forces.
The Kazakh law enforcement agencies said they launched a counter-terror operation to establish order.
The commandant’s office in charge of enforcing the state of emergency called on Almaty residents "to remain calm and render assistance to the law-enforcement agencies in establishing the Constitutional order and public security,” TASS reported.
As the statement says, "radically-minded supporters of riots have caused huge damage to the city, put up resistance to the legitimate actions of law-enforcement agencies for establishing order and providing security."
The commandant’s office also reported that "the extremists are on a looting spree, causing damage to business." Moreover, "they are endangering the lives and health of civilians, obstructing the work of medical workers and causing damage to polyclinics and hospitals."
"Bandits who are on the rampage in Almaty are highly organized, which is evidence that they were seriously trained abroad" and "their attack on Kazakhstan is an act of aggression and an attempt to disrupt the state’s integrity," the statement says.
Kazakhstan officially invoked Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), asking fellow CSTO allies to send peacekeepers as the country was facing national security threats with outside interference.
The CSTO its peacekeeping forces.
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1072375.html