Thursday,
Armenian, Azeri FMs Hold ‘Useful’ Talks
• Emil Danielyan
U.S. - Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov (R) of Azerbaijan and Zohrab
Mnatsakanian (second from right) of Armenia pose for a photograph with the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs in New York, .
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in New York late on
Wednesday for fresh talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which official
Yerevan described as “useful.”
The three-hour talks between Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov began in
the presence of the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE
Minsk Group. The two ministers then had a one-on-one discussion.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry called the talks a “useful exchange of thoughts”
on how to resolve the Karabakh conflict. “The interlocutors agreed to continue
the dialogue, including within the framework of the co-chairs’ upcoming visit
to the region,” it said in a statement.
Mammadyarov made similar comments on what was his second meeting with
Mnatsakanian in over two months. “It was an interesting and important exchange
of views on continuing developments in the conflict’s resolution as well as
about what needs to be done for establishing a lasting peace in the region,”
the Azerbaijani news agency Trend quoted him as saying.
“We agreed to continue negotiations next month, including through the
co-chairs’ visit to the region,” added the Azerbaijani minister.
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Tigran
Balayan, reiterated the official Armenian line that major progress towards a
Karabakh settlement requires an “atmosphere conducive to peace.” In that
regard, Balayan pointed to Baku’s reluctance to implement confidence-building
agreements that were reached by the leaders of the two warring nations in 2016.
Those agreements envisage specific safeguards against deadly ceasefire
violations along the “line of contact” around Karabakh and the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Tension on those frontlines seems to have somewhat increased in recent weeks.
Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army reported that one of its soldiers, Aghasi
Mkrtchian, was shot dead by Azerbaijani forces on Wednesday evening.
U.S. -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses the 73rd session of
the United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York,
September 25, 2018
Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanian met in New York the day after Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian hit out at Azerbaijan in a speech delivered at a
session of the UN General Assembly.
Pashinian portrayed Baku’s refusal to directly negotiate with Karabakh’s ethnic
Armenian leader as further proof of its desire to “cleanse Armenians from
Karabakh.”
“How can Azerbaijan lay claim to Nagorno-Karabakh without even speaking to
Nagorno-Karabakh?” he said. “Is this possible? This is possible only if the
Azerbaijani government wants the territory but not its people.”
The Armenian leader also stated that the Karabakh dispute must be resolved
through “mutual concessions by all sides.” He did not elaborate.
Baku was quick to condemn Pashinian’s remarks. A top foreign policy aide to
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said they could torpedo the peace process.
Security Chief Vows To Detail Corruption Claims Against Kocharian
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Artur Vanetsian (L), director of the National Security Service (NSS),
and Special Investigative Service chief Sasun Khachatrian at a cabinet meeting
in Yerevan, 20 September 2018.
Artur Vanetsian, the head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS), on
Thursday pledged to elaborate “soon” on his recent allegations of corruption
made against former President Robert Kocharian.
Vanetsian said on September 11 that the NSS has launched a “money laundering”
investigation into what he described as hundreds of millions of dollars worth
of assets belonging to Kocharian and his family members. “We will publicize who
owns what and how they acquired it,” Vanetsian told a news conference held amid
a scandal sparked by his leaked phone calls with the head of another
law-enforcement agency, the Special Investigative Service (SIS).
The SIS arrested Kocharian in late July on charges stemming from the deadly
2008 breakup of post-election opposition protests in Yerevan. Armenia’s Court
of Appeals freed him from custody more than two weeks later.
Kocharian denies the accusations as politically motivated. He has portrayed
Vanetsian’s leaked phone calls with the SIS chief Sasun Khachatrian as further
proof that Prime Minster Nikol Pashinian, who played a key role in the 2008
protests, is waging a “vendetta” against him.
In that audio, Vanetsian can be heard telling Khachatrian that he ordered a
district court judge to sanction the ex-president’s arrest.
The two security officials met the press on September 11 hours after the secret
recordings were widely circulated by Armenian online media outlets. They not
only defended the SIS’s investigation into the 2008 violence but also accused
Kocharian of corruption. Vanetsian said that the latter will be questioned as
part of the money laundering probe.
The NSS chief told reporters on Thursday that his agency is continuing to
scrutinize the Kocharian family’s holdings and will publicize its findings
“soon.” He refused to comment further.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Kocharian, Aram Orbelian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian
service that his client has not yet been charged or even questioned in
connection with the corruption claims.
Kocharian, who governed Armenia from 1998-2008, has denied enriching himself or
his family while in office. He has only admitted that his two sons are engaged
in entrepreneurial activity. His elder son Sedrak reportedly filed a defamation
suit against Vanetsian last week.
Tsarukian Backer Accused Of Election-Related Violence
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - The Prosperous Armenia Party's mayoral candidate Naira Zohrabian
speaks at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, 21 September 2018.
An activist of businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) has
been arrested on charges of assaulting police officers on the eve of Sunday’s
municipal elections in Yerevan.
A BHK campaign office in the city’s Ajapnyak district was searched by Armenia’s
police and Investigative Committee on Saturday on Saturday on suspicion of
handing out vote bribes. The raid provoked an angry reaction from local party
activists who argued with law-enforcement officers at the scene. The office
coordinator, Grigor Grigorian, was arrested on Tuesday.
The Investigative Committee said on Thursday that Grigorian, who is also the
deputy chief of the district administration, has been formally charged with
assault. In a statement, the law-enforcement body claimed that he told dozens
of BHK supporters to break into the campaign office, smash its furniture and
thus disrupt the search. He and other persons “used violence” against some of
the policemen, according to the statement.
Gevorg Petrosian, a BHK parliamentarian who witnessed the incident, strongly
denied the accusations. “There could have been no violence against the
policemen because they were numerous and there was no intention to attack
them,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “There was only commotion.”
Tsarukian’s party, which has the second largest group in the Armenian
parliament, did not officially react to the arrest as of Thursday evening . Its
senior top representatives condemned the Ajapnyak raid over the weekend. Naira
Zohrabian, the BHK candidate for Yerevan mayor, labelled it as
“counterpropaganda” against her party.
Speaking to journalists on Sunday, Zohrabian accused law-enforcement
authorities of systematically harassing her supporters during the two-week
election campaign. She said that the police detained 300 BHK activists on
suspicion of vote but failed to find any evidence of the illegal practice.
According to the official election results, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My
Step bloc won 81 percent of the vote, compared with just 7 percent polled by
the BHK. Tsarukian on Monday recognized those results and congratulated My Step
on its landslide victory.
U.S. Indicts Turkish-American Lobbyist Arrested In Armenia
Armenia - Turkish American activist Kemal Oksuz is questioned by Armenian
police, 29 August 2018.
U.S. authorities have unsealed an indictment against a Turkish-American
activist charged with lying to congressional investigators regarding a trip by
U.S. lawmakers to Azerbaijan five years ago.
The indictment, which was handed down in April, was released on September 24,
more than three weeks after the Turkish-born man, Kemal Oksuz, was arrested in
Armenia on a U.S. warrant.
Oksuz, a Houston-based businessman who used to run two organizations --
Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians and the Assembly of the Friends of
Azerbaijan -- was charged by the grand jury with lying on congressional
disclosure forms regarding the 2013 all-expenses-paid visit to Azerbaijan made
by 10 members and 32 staffers of Congress.
According to the five-count indictment, the trip was funded with the help by
Azerbaijan's state-run SOCAR oil company, which provided $750,000 toward the
effort.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General, said last week that it has received
a formal extradition request from U.S. law-enforcement authorities.
Police in Yerevan arrested Oksuz on August 29 and released a video of his
police interrogation the next day. In the video, Oksuz said that SOCAR covered
the travel expenses of the U.S. officials and gave them expensive gifts in 2013.
"That may have been corruption, I don't know," he said.
It remains unclear why Oksuz decided to relocate to Armenia, a country that has
strained relations with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. Just like other Turkish
American activists, he had lobbied the U.S. Congress against recognizing the
1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
After U.S. news reports in 2015 raised questions about the funding of the trip,
several of the U.S. lawmakers returned some of the gifts that they had received
as part of the trip to Azerbaijan.
Press Review
“Zhamanak” says that after the local election in Yerevan the Republican Party
of Armenia (HHK), the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) and the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) can no longer resist Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s plans to hold pre-term general elections. The paper says they
can only hope to clinch some concessions from Pashinian regarding practical
modalities of the elections.
“Hraparak” also comments on Pashinian’s upcoming election-related negotiations
with the parliamentary forces. “Here is the most likely scenario,” writes the
paper. “Pashinian will agree with the factions that he will resign, the
parliament will twice fail to elect a new prime minister, and the parliament
will be legally dissolved. If this option proves risky, Pashinian will rally
the people and blockade the parliament until the parliament gives in.”
“Zhoghovurd” says that in his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York
Pashinian made a number of important points regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict. “On the one hand, he stated that the security and status of the
Artsakh Republic will be Armenia’s top priority in the negotiation process,”
explains the paper. “He said that any attempt to resolve the conflict
militarily would directly threaten regional security, democracy and human
rights. Pashinian reaffirmed that Armenia will continue its constructive
engagement in the peace process in the OSCE Minsk Group format. At the same
time the prime minister presented the conflict in the sole context of the
international principle of secession-for-salvation.”
(Artur Papian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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