Author: Tambiyan Samvel

 14:11,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Iran Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is planning to visit Armenia and Azerbaijan in the nearest future, Mehr news agency reports.

“Focusing on neighbors, including the northern neighbors, is one of the foreign policy priorities of the new Iranian government”, FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview with the Russian television channel. “Armenia and Azerbaijan are two good neighbors of the Islamic Republic of Iran, so we cannot work against each other. Iran’s foreign policy is a balanced foreign policy”, the minister said, adding that he will “visit the two countries at the appropriate time”.

 16:31, 28 September, 2021

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 28, ARMENPRESS. The National Interest has published an article about the 2020 war launched by Azerbaijan against Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), the Turkish and Azerbaijani aggression, atrocities, the necessity of imposing sanctions on Azerbaijan, the urgency of the return of all Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan, as well as about the silence of the international community.

“Azerbaijan and Turkey launched their assault on Nagorno Karabakh to continue the Ottoman project of more than a century ago. Silence encourages them and others”, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), starts his article.

“One year ago on September 27, the Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkish Special Forces and Syrian jihadis acting as Turkish mercenaries, launched a surprise attack on Nagorno Karabakh”, he says.  “When in 1991, Azerbaijan re-asserted its independence upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, its parliament did so based on the borders of the first independent Republic of Azerbaijan and not upon the territory of the subsequent Soviet-created Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The population of the autonomous oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijani control, a move that was constitutionally valid”.

The article notes that “Baku had committed as part of the Minsk Group process to resolve the territorial dispute diplomatically”. “While Azerbaijani diplomats might say the progress was going nowhere, that was a lie”, Michael Rubin says.

“Biden was right to recognize officially the Armenian Genocide. However, the following day, Blinken quietly waived Section 907 again, effectively rewarding Azerbaijan for its aggression. By both the letter and the spirit of the Freedom Support Act, Blinken’s move violated U.S. law”, he says.

The author of the article has also recalled the continuous aggression by Azerbaijan. “On March 25, 2021, Azerbaijani soldiers threw stones at Armenian civilian cars on the Sarushen-Karmir Shuka road in Artsakh’s Askeran region. Three days later, Azerbaijani troops ambushed an Armenian vehicle transporting the bodies of Armenian soldiers killed in the forty-four-day war. On April 20, Azerbaijani forces fired at an Armenian home on Vagharshyan Street in the Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh”, Michael Rubin says. “Despite Azerbaijan’s diplomatic promises to respect religious freedom, on April 26, three Azerbaijani soldiers beat and dragged an Armenian pastor in Syunik’s Aravus village. Two days later, between eight and ten Azerbaijanis in civilian dress infiltrated the buffer zone between the two sides, before being chased off by Armenian forces. In June, such aggression accelerated yet again. Azerbaijani soldiers, perhaps hungry as Azerbaijani officials embezzled military supplies, fired on shepherds in Armenia and stole their cattle.

“As the Biden administration remained silent, Azerbaijan increased the severity of attacks”, the author of the article notes.

Perhaps the biggest Azerbaijani affront, however, is the continued holding and torture of Armenian prisoners of war (POW). While the State Department might make occasional calls for their return, Azerbaijani authorities dismiss these as readily as the Taliban does Blinken’s calls for diversity in the Taliban cabinet. After all, when Blinken waives sanctions on Azerbaijan to allow American funding to flow to Baku, why should Aliyev take American statements seriously? 

Azerbaijan and Turkey launched their assault on Nagorno Karabakh to continue the Ottoman project of more than a century ago. Silence encourages them and others. The precedent of ethnic cleansing that they undertake—and the lack of any serious response to it—could destabilize areas far beyond the South Caucasus. It is time to sanction Azerbaijan until Aliyev returns the last Armenian POW, pays compensation for his aggression, and holds accountable every Azerbaijani soldier on video torturing Armenians or destroying cultural heritage”, Michael Rubin said in his article.

 12:11,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. The government of Armenia approved today the 2020 state budget draft.

On this occasion Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed his message, stating that Armenia is currently facing difficult challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic, social and security consequences of the 44-Day War are not overcome yet.

Pashinyan said the snap parliamentary elections this year helped to solve the domestic political crisis and created quite firm grounds for the Armenian people’s aspiration to look to the future.

“The government’s action plan must create grounds for the peaceful, stable and inclusive development of Armenia in the medium-run”, Pashinyan said. “Our goals, which are reflected in the 2020 budget and also in the action plan, are ambitious and realistic. We understand that their implementation requires not only economic measures by the government, but also public and cultural reforms. We first of all attach importance to raising the efficiency of the public administration system, as well as changing and developing the working culture. The most important, probably, is the planning and implementation culture, the implementation processes of programs, the non-fulfillment of which leads to underperformance of capital expenditures and slows down the implementation of the government’s goals, thus obstructing also the economic growth. In this regard the capacity development of the private sector plays a key role, and the government’s efforts for this goal have started to give results, in the person of those companies which are making investments in the state capital construction field for being competitive, thus seeking to implement these projects on time and in a high quality. The government plans to continue its policy of promoting investments in this field, applying three main tools for this: the first is the transparency of state procurement system, the second is the increase of volumes of tenders and the third are the new legislative initiatives aimed at facilitating the relations with reliable companies”.

According to Pashinyan, the next key task is the development of analytical capacities, which will allow to raise the efficiency of expenditures, investments, address the social programs, which is one of the most important issues. “As a result the citizens’ trust will be raised that their taxes are spent maximally effectively and in a targeted way. The citizens of Armenia must feel every day the impact of the government’s actions on their life. One of the key components of this is the engagement of the broad public circles into various stages of formation and performance of the budget, over which steps have already been taken in the past three years, and great attention would be paid also in the future”, PM Pashinyan said, adding that 2020 budget is based on three main priorities – reform of the security system, infrastructure development and upgrading of education and science.

“We are going to pay a great focus on ensuring security, without which it would be impossible to implement the long-term development goals. In this sense, not only the upgrading of defense capacities of the Army, but also the formation of a favorable external environment around Armenia, the consistent implementation of the agenda on opening a peaceful development era for Armenia, Artsakh and the region are important. In this sense the re-opening and development of regional economic and transportation infrastructure is also important, which can qualitatively change the content and structure of Armenia’s economy, be an additional boost for the domestic infrastructure development, ensure a long-term inclusive economic growth, by creating equal conditions for the citizens of Armenia in order to be engaged in economic activity, significantly raise our country’s attractiveness for foreign direct investments. Therefore, the access to education, inclusive development and content reforms is our long-term priority. Our goal is to make person’s education a lifestyle, this is the only way of being a competitive nation and an individual in the modern world”, the PM stated.

According to him, science and technology development is the logical continuation of this process, and here the government is already introducing new funding formulas. However, he notes that all the problems cannot be solved by one budget.

“In the budget of 2022 we have tried to cautiously balance the priorities of the government and at the same time ensure the manageability of different types of fiscal risks. We set our strategic goals and their implementation priorities in a way that the implementation of each of them creates grounds for the effective implementation of the others. We are confident that the government’s action plan will have a successful implementation to ensure the security, welfare and dignified life of the Armenian citizens”, Nikol Pashinyan said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Armenian journalists again win silver in International Football Tournament in Lithuania

Armenian Journalists’ Football Team has won the silver medal in the traditional Journalists’ International Football Tournament held from September 10 to 13 in Lithuanian town of Druskininkai.

The event was held for the 16th time. This year 9 teams participated in it, including ones from Armenia, Latvia, Poland, Moldova. They were joined by 5 teams representing major Lithuanian media.

The Armenian team had 6 wins, including 4 with big score, played one draw and had 1 defeat. Team from Moldova has again come the first in the tournament with 24 points. It won in all 8 games and did not miss a goal. Pressas team of Union of Lithuanian Journalists finished the third.

The player of the Armenian team Davit Yeghiazaryan who scored 12 goals was recognized the best striker of the tournament and awarded Lithuania’s team shirt.

Lithuanian Journalists' Union is the traditional organizer of the tournament.

The general sponsor of Armenian team’s participation was TotoGaming bookmaker company.

Armenia took the silver in the 2019 tournament as well, prior to it they took the 3d place in a row. The team includes representatives of a number of Armenian mass media.

The details about the participation of the  Armenian journalists’ team in the tournament are available on the official Facebook Page of the team – .

 11:41, 9 September, 2021

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS. 587 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded over the past 24 hours, bringing the cumulative total number of confirmed cases to 246,997, the Armenian Center for Disease Control and Prevention said.

6,659 tests were administered.

529 people recovered, raising the total number of recoveries to 230,820.

14 patients died, bringing the death toll to 4968. This number doesn’t include the deaths of 1169 other persons (2 in the past 24 hours) infected with the virus who died from co-morbidities.

As of September 9, 11:00 the number of active cases stood at 10,040.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan