Category: 2020

Links to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Clashes / Ceasefire – Days 27 -28 , Oct 23-24, 2020

Manouk Vasilian
To Armenian News Readers:
 
In order to minimize the number of individual posts on Armenian News Website,
the links to some repetitive items from major sources are listed
below.
 
Thank you
 
———–
 
US wades in cautiously to Armenia-Azerbaijan peace effort
 
audio: Pompeo To Meet With Azerbaijan And Armenia’s Foreign Ministers Amid Fierce Conflict
 
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
 
Pompeo meets Armenian, Azeri ministers over Nagorno-Karabakh
 
Pompeo steps up efforts to end Nagorno-Karabakh fighting
 
US wades in cautiously to Armenia-Azerbaijan peace effort
 
Armenian leader sees no quick diplomatic solution in Nagorno-Karabakh
 https://news.yahoo.com/global-powers-push-end-nagorno-095820143.html
 
US: Pompeo Greets Armenian Counterpart At State
 
Cardinal Dolan calls for ‘the shield of faith’ to protect Armenian Christians
 
Armenians are great people and we’re going to help them – Donald Trump
 
Armenian FM, US Secretary of State meet in Washington, DC
 
Tru,p says he wants to help Armenia in conflict with Azerbaijan
 
US Hosts Armenia & Azerbaijan for talks
 
 Pakistan is sending armed terrorists to Azerbaijan, Armenian PM tells WION
 https://www.wionews.com/world/pakistan-is-sending-armed-terrorists-to-azerbaijan-armenian-pm-tells-wion-337721
 
Fighting Over Nagorno-Karabakh Goes on Despite US Mediation
 
Nagorno-Karabakh fighting rages as US hosts talks
 
Heavy fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh continues as U.S. hosts peace talks
 
Number of Armenian troops killed in Karabakh conflict rises by 36 to 963
 
Nearly 5000 have died in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Putin says
 
Clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh after Washington talks
 
Number of Armenian troops killed in Karabakh conflict rises by 36 to 963 -Ifax
 
Live Updates: Yerevan Denies Baku’s Report of Downed Armenian Plane, Calls it ‘Absolute Lie’
 
Pompeo calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to stop violence in Karabakh
 
Coronavirus thrives in Karabakh’s bomb shelters
 
Negotiations on Karabakh in the USA: Armenia agrees to peacekeepers, Azerbaijan to lay down arms        
 
Fighting over disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues despite US mediation
 
Azerbaijanis oppose negotiations as they advance on frontline
 
 
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict | Global powers push to end Nagorno-Karabakh fighting
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Opinion/Editorial: A diplomatic surge is needed in Azerbaijan

Emil Lazarian
Metro Daily News
Oct 24 2020
 
 
 
 
A complicated conflict in a faraway foreign land isn’t likely to compete for attention with the frenzied presidential election and unabated coronavirus crisis gripping this nation.
 
National View editorials are fact-based conclusions and opinions written by the editorial board of a newspaper or wire service that the Daily News publishes content from. News reporters are not involved or consulted.
 
A complicated conflict in a faraway foreign land isn’t likely to compete for attention with the frenzied presidential election and unabated coronavirus crisis gripping this nation. But American citizens — and especially American policymakers — should focus on the spiraling violence in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
 
Most profoundly, for humanitarian reasons: The fighting is the fiercest since initial post-Soviet era war broke out in the 1990s, when the dispute erupted in the ethnic Armenia enclave in western Azerbaijan.
 
Today, the enmity is just as intense, but the weaponry is more lethal. Drones and more powerful artillery are being deployed against combatants and civilians alike. To date, more than 700 soldiers and an undetermined number of citizens of Armenian descent have been killed. Azerbaijan has not officially reported its casualty count, but it’s likely to be high, too. And scores more have been uprooted from their homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
The conflict is geopolitically consequential, too, and risks broadening into a wider regional war. It’s already devolved into a proxy fight between Russia, which backs Armenia (but has sold arms to Azerbaijan, too) and Turkey, which staunchly backs Azerbaijan. And because Turkey is a NATO nation, Western allies — especially the U.S. — can’t afford to let domestic distractions detract from diplomatic efforts that are essential to at least get to a durable cease-fire, let alone a lasting Armenia-Azerbaijan accord.
 
A diplomatic international infrastructure is already in place via the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, in which co-chairs Russia, France and the U.S. have long sought a negotiated Nagorno-Karabakh solution. Washington has joined Moscow and Paris in calls for a cease-fire and negotiations, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to separately meet with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts on Friday. The challenges for Minsk Group countries and other nations “is to develop a package of positive and negative incentives that make negotiations look better than fighting: carrots and sticks, such as promises of aid or threats of limits to relationships, economic and otherwise (such as through sanctions),” according to Olga Oliker, the program director for Europe and Central Asia for the International Crisis Group. The Brussels-based Oliker added in an email exchange with an editorial writer that an international mission “could provide unbiased ground truth about what’s going on in an atmosphere of dueling narratives, and also help calm matters.” Any potential “peacekeeping mission would also require the parties to agree to its deployment and to, in fact, first create a peace that could be kept.”
 
Oliker said U.S. envoys historically have “engaged actively in shuttle diplomacy and worked closely with Russia, as well as France and others, to develop and suggest ideas. In the region, officials have told Crisis Group staff that they felt that the United States was not paying much attention in recent years.”
 
There is “some U.S. activity, but more would be good,” John Herbst, director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, told an editorial writer. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan, added that the U.S. has a direct security and economic interest in peace in the Caucasus.
 
Diplomacy has previously worked, Oliker said, and “here, America’s reputation and global heft can be useful. Moreover, simply by paying attention, the U.S. and other countries show that the conflict, and the region, is not irrelevant to the rest of the world.”
 
Indeed, on humanitarian and geopolitical grounds, the conflict is not only relevant, but essential, and the rest of the world, led in part by the U.S., can and should help prevent further bloodshed in an already shaken world.
 
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
 
 
 

Cher, Rep. Susie Lee host early voting rally in southwest Las Vegas

Ara Felekian
Review Journal
Oct 24 2020

By Sabrina Schnur Las Vegas Review-Journal
– 4:15 pm


Cher and Congresswoman Susie Lee rallied an audience of about 100 people Saturday night in southwest Las Vegas to ensure everyone has a plan to vote in the general election.

In the first of two voter mobilization events sponsored by the Biden Harris campaign this weekend hosted by the singer and actress Cher and Lee rallied at The Gramercy Residences in southwest Las Vegas to promote why they’re voting for Joe Biden. On Sunday, Cher is expected to host a Pride Walk to the Polls at 10 a.m. at an as-yet unannounced Las Vegas location.

While rallygoers found their seats Saturday, Lee told the Review-Journal that judging by early voter turnout, residents are excited to vote after witnessing President Donald Trump’s decisions the past four years.

“People are fired up and ready for change,” she said. “We live in a community who has seen this failed leadership in action.”

Lee said the nation’s next president is tasked with ending the pandemic.

“We need someone who recognizes the science,” she said. “We’re not going to get out of this devastation until we beat this virus.”

Lee told the crowd that she understood their excitement was because most local residents haven’t heard live entertainment in months because of COVID-19, and that she was working in Congress to put together another relief package.

The coronavirus pandemic struck Las Vegas “harder than anywhere in this country,” she said, noting the virus’ effect on the the city’s economy. “And it didn’t have to be that way if we had a leader that recognized the science. If we had a leader that took steps and just wore a damn mask. I am a one-issue congresswoman right now and that is getting another package and getting aid into the hands of American people.


“Nevada will come back better and stronger than before. We always have and we always will.”

Cher sang “Walking in Memphis” live before a seven-minute speech on her fears if Trump were elected for another four years and the things she’s spoken to Biden about fixing. Cher said she’s known Biden since 2006 and knows him to be honest.

“You cannot build anything unless you build it on the truth. That’s one of Joe’s great attributes is he is honest. He is truthful. He knows whats he’s doing and he’s smart,” she said. “If you don’t vote you’ll have nothing. If (Trump) gets another four years in office, we will have nothing.”

Cher told stories about her family’s history in poverty, including how embarrassed she was when she had to rubber band the soles of her shoes so she could walk to school. She said she remembers when she was 10 and learned women were introduced by the name’s of their husbands and she doesn’t want to reverse women’s progress.

She praised Biden’s goals if elected. “He’s got this idea to make jobs where there were no jobs before and they’re good jobs and they pay well,” Cher said. “I want people to have better. I want them to feel good about themselves and have a good living.”

In response to the rally, the local campaign for President Donald Trump issued a statement criticizing Biden.

“Joe Biden would turn back time to the days of record unemployment and home foreclosures. Nevadans can feel something inside them say they really don’t think Joe Biden is strong enough, and come November 3, the Silver State will re-elect President Trump,” according to the statement from Keith Schipper, spokesman for Trump Victory.

‘Most important election’

Rallygoers were fired up by the event. Dave Bye, for one, said this was his first political rally in nearly 30 years, since a Bill Clinton event in the early 90s.

“This is probably the most important election in my lifetime and I feel really strongly about the outcome,” the 61-year-old Las Vegan said.

“The camaraderie here with other Biden supporters is nice,” he said.

Bye said he voted early and in-person to avoid “any shenanigans,” and appreciated that voting opportunities are widely available in Las Vegas.

Pattie Mercadante, 67, said that she’s already received confirmation her mail-in ballot was received but that she couldn’t miss out on a chance at a free Cher concert. “How could I not be here? It’s Cher after all!” she said before the rally.

Laura Esparza, 52, and her daughter, Victoria Wright, 21, of Henderson, said they appreciated the social distancing and free masks at the rally. This is Wright’s first presidential election and the two have been very involved in campaigning locally.

“If it takes five minutes to vote, it’s five minutes well-spent,” Esparza said.


Conflict in the Caucasus: when the soldiers are younger than the war they are fighting

Garo Vardanian
The Economist
Oct 23 2020

Fear and fervour fuel conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan


Oct 23rd 2020

BY ARKADY OSTROVSKY

There is a certain mood in Azerbaijan these days. My first taste of it came on a recent flight from Istanbul to Baku. As the Azerbaijan Airlines plane prepared for take-off, the pilot made an announcement to thunderous applause from the cabin. A neighbour translated his words: “Our armed forces have liberated the city of Zengilan. Glory to our army. Glory to our president and commander-in-chief.”

Landing in Baku a few hours later I was greeted at passport control with fluorescent signs: “Karabakh is ours. Karabakh is Azerbaijan”. Further patriotic spectacles awaited me when I checked into my hotel: the trio of flame-shaped skyscrapers that dominate the skyline of Baku were covered in giant images of Azerbaijani soldiers waving flags, illuminated by 10,000 high-power led lights. It did not seem like the backdrop to peace talks.

The contested city in question, Zengilan, sits close to the southern edge of Nagorno-Karabakh, a beautiful wooded, mountainous stretch of land less than 5,000 square kilometres in size, which few people outside the Caucasus could point to on a map. Yet this forgotten region, in a forgotten part of the world, is now threatening to trigger a conflict of far wider consequence.

Nagorno-Karabakh was the focus of a bloody war between Azerbaijan and Armenia from 1992-94, in which 30,000 people died. Though violence over the disputed area has flared periodically since then, the fighting that erupted in late September seemed to open a new and more dangerous chapter.

For weeks missiles and shells have been launched at urban areas on both sides, killing dozens of civilians. Successive ceasefires have been broken. Armenia says that half of the 150,000-strong population of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have been displaced; those who stay cower in basements to avoid the shelling. Though few Azerbaijanis live in Nagorno-Karabakh these days – hundreds of thousands were displaced from Armenian regions in the late 1980s and early 1990s – the government refuses to say how many of Azerbaijan’s troops have died. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said on October 22nd that the overall death toll was “nearing 5,000”.

The current conflict has deep roots. The area is a patchwork of religions and ethnicities. Nagorno-Karabakh, which is populated by ethnic Armenians, who are Christian, sits within the internationally recognised borders of Muslim Azerbaijan. The peoples of Azerbaijan and Armenia both claim Nagorno-Karabakh as their Jerusalem, the cradle of their civilisation, central to their identity and statehood. Both countries identify deep cultural links with the area, the historical home of Armenian princes and Azerbaijani poets.

During my time in Baku, I realised that shows of nationalism were designed not to rally people around the flag – they needed little encouragement – but to channel the upsurge of national sentiment. Equally, the 9pm curfew in the city, and blocking of social media there, were aimed at managing uncontrolled expressions of nationalism, as well as the government’s claim to be preventing terrorist attacks and the spread of disinformation.

The existence of an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan is no historical accident. In 1918, as the Russian empire crumbled, the three Caucasus republics declared their independence, only to be captured by the Bolsheviks soon after. Lenin assigned the predominantly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh to Soviet Azerbaijan a century ago, as a prize for securing control over its oilfields, and in the hope of installing a red beacon in the Muslim world.

Nagorno-Karabakh is only one of many such outposts that litter the former Soviet states today. Centralised powers have long viewed local allegiances with suspicion and sought to assert a unifying political ideology over what they see the divisive influence of ethnicity or religion. So it was in the Caucasus: Lenin hoped that communism would supersede other identities.

It didn’t. Fear, not faith, kept the Soviet Union together. Nagorno-Karabakh was the first ethnic conflict to blow up on Mikhail Gorbachev as he started loosening Moscow’s repressive grip on the Soviet empire in the 1980s. In February 1988 demonstrators gathered in the enclave’s capital to demand that the region become part of the Armenian Soviet Republic. A week later a mob staged a bloody pogrom against ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. The violence shattered the façade of friendship between nations within the ussr.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the violence escalated into full-scale war in 1992. The conflict killed tens of thousands of people and forced a million more out of their homes. Backed by Russia, Armenia took over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, depriving Azerbaijan of a large chunk of its territory. For Armenia that victory was a foundation of its post-Soviet statehood. In Azerbaijan, it was a cause of trauma and humiliation. Yet Russia saw the continued dispute as a way both to maintain influence over its former vassals and to block Turkey’s influence in the region.

Today the pieces have all shifted. A recent oil boom in Azerbaijan has fuelled both military spending and popular demands to correct what most of the country’s population sees as a historic injustice. Armenia’s current, populist president, Nikol Pashinyan, did not establish his credentials in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, unlike previous leaders, and seems to be compensating with incendiary rhetoric.

Meanwhile the historical imperial rivalry between Russia and Turkey continues to play out. By backing Azerbaijan militarily, Turkey is entering Russia’s former backyard, just as Russia has done with Turkey during recent conflicts in Syria and Libya, once part of the Ottoman Empire. In the past Russia has restrained Azerbaijan from attempting to regain territory by force; now it appears to be giving it a green light.

As ever, the people of the Caucasus are caught in the middle. Many of the soldiers now fighting on each side are younger than the conflict itself. The wounded and displaced civilians are unlikely ever to see a light show on a skyscraper. As nations rise and fall, and wealth ebbs and flows, one story remains the same. The fate of those on the ground in Nagorno-Karabakh relies on geopolitical games playing out far, far away.■

PHOTOGRAPHS: LORENZO MELONI


More photos at


For some in West Fargo, new Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict stirs memories of war

Markos Nalchajian
In Forum
Oct 25 2020
Written By: C.S. Hagen | Oct 25th 2020 – 5am.


WEST FARGO — Growing up in Azerbaijan, Kamala Gasimli’s fondest memories are of her family’s farm blooming with walnut, fig and pomegranate trees, and the sweetest tomatoes she’s ever eaten. In the warmer months she woke up every morning with a flower on her pillow, placed there by her father.

Her last memory of her mountainous homeland is the flames, and terror.

“Everything was in the fire, there was fire everywhere and when I looked back, I could see how everything was burning,” Gasimli said before tears left her speechless.

At 19 years old, she and her family members packed themselves into a pickup truck and fled from the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Jabrayil to Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan. War between Armenia and Azerbaijan had broken out, making her family refugees.

Sadly for Gasimli and her husband, Azer Akhmedov, who now live in West Fargo, war has erupted again along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

Two weeks ago, Azerbaijan began reportedly attacking districts around the Nagorno-Karabakh region with precision missile strikes, and has taken some areas back that were part of Azerbaijan during the Soviet era, according to news reports.

Although Gasimli and her husband do not want war with Armenia, they’re hopeful that one day soon they can go back to visit.

“For 27 years I have not seen my village, and I dream of my village every single month,” said Akhmedov, a local university professor. “Now my village is liberated as of October 4 — 27 years after it was invaded.”

Tensions in the region go back thousands of years. Times of war and conquest were followed by peace, with Azerbaijanis and Armenians living quietly as neighbors. The most recent violence has centered on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which lies within Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians.

Two years of war followed the Soviet Union’s collapse, and tensions disintegrated into a series of pogroms against Armenians. The ethnic violence in the 1990s sent Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, an Armenian, and her family, running for their lives from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital city.

Turcotte wrote about her life on the run from 1993 to 1994 in a childhood diary. Later, she transformed her diary into a book entitled “Nowhere, a Story of Exile.”

“I wrote it from the heart when I was sitting in Wahpeton, North Dakota,” said Turcotte, who once lived there but now lives in Maine. “I became a refugee because of the same aggression we’re seeing now.”

Her fondest childhood memories are of her family and the Armenian community in Baku. “That’s one thing they took away that can’t be quantified. We are spread all over the world. The cousins I have in Russia are now strangers to me,” Turcotte said.

There’s little that Armenians and Azerbaijanis seem to agree on, but both sides do agree that religion, as Azerbaijan is mostly Muslim and Armenia is mostly Christian, is not the main reason for the current hostilities.

Turcotte said she has family who are fighting on the front lines. She knows they’re still alive, but she said she has friends, one a diplomat and another an opera singer, who have been killed because of recent violence.

Since Sept. 27 when the conflict began, she said she’s gotten about three hours of sleep a night.

“Imagine how you felt on 9/11. That is how we feel every day since September 27,” Turcotte said. “I’ve raised more than $100,000 for refugees and for sleeping bags for troops and medical aid for victims. I’m constantly working, and I’m not stopping until they stop bombing.”

Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte. Special to The Forum

The U.S. embassy in Armenia has called for a cessation of hostility, and for a return to the negotiating table. Another life-threatening issue in the two countries is the coronavirus, which is spreading faster because of the conflict.

Fariz Huseynov left Azerbaijan to come to the United States for education reasons and is now a professor who lives in West Fargo.

As a child, Huseynov’s chess teacher was an Armenian in Azerbaijan. Huseynov, too, doesn’t want war, but feels that Armenia has been breaking promises for 30 years.

“Our government says we’re not fighting Armenia, we’re fighting to get our lands,” Huseynov said.

Like Akhmedov’s family, Huseynov is following the conflict online and through information from the military.

Akhmedov said the Azerbaijani military is winning and is more technologically advanced with the use of precise military strikes by drones. “I don’t want to see the Armenian army being destroyed. It doesn’t feel right when these people could have lived,” Akhmedov said.

Three decades ago, it was the Azerbaijani fighters who suffered defeat, which left a scar on the country’s psyche.

“Because of those losses, people couldn’t fight for their rights. They realized that democratic ideas had such a huge hit because we lost our lands, and Western world didn’t help get our lands back through peace,” Akhmedov said.

“Both sides have their truths and both sides have aspirations,” he said. “We used to live together; peace will happen again.”





International community must stop Turkish and Azeri aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh region

Garnik Tadevosian
Cyprus Mail
Oct 25 2020
By CM 


We, the undersigned, call upon the government of the United Kingdom and other countries with interests in the region of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh to push for an immediate and full truce with parties returning to negotiations and outside military involvement halted. Human rights are not served by war and without such intervention, destruction and loss of life will only increase. The potential for much wider instability and turbulence is great.

On September 27, Azerbaijan began an unprovoked and sustained attack on the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, also called Artsakh. With direct and active military support from Turkey, this has great potential for destabilising the entire region.  This is not, as some have portrayed it, a war of Muslim against Christian. It is an attack on human rights and lives are at stake. Although an 89 per cent majority in the 1926 census, Armenians there were forced to settle for an autonomous region within Azerbaijan until the fall of the Soviet Union. They are not an occupying force, but a majority, indigenous ethnic population who sought independence in 1991 because of decades of discrimination against them under Azerbaijan’s rule. The right to self-determination is enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Act and we ask that this be upheld. It is of greatest concern that now President Ilham Aliyev demands that all Armenians leave Nagorno Karabakh before negotiations can begin.

Today’s war is not restricted to the disputed area but now includes Armenia where Turkish planes have invaded its airspace and Azeri shelling hits civilians, homes and schools in Nagorno-Karabakh and within the borders of Armenia. Threats have been voiced about destroying sites that would mean environmental disaster for the region. The war is now spreading to areas of Azerbaijan with a proportionate Armenian response in retaliation. Reports confirm that mercenaries brought from Syria through Turkey are fighting for the Azeris, in breach of a UN convention banning this practice. Azerbaijan is a party to the convention.

It is clear that there would have been no advantage to Armenia beginning such a war. The Armenian government has asked for a return to the negotiation table with the Minsk Group, a call rejected by Azerbaijan and Turkey. Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis is quickly deepening across the region with tragic loss of life on both sides. Dangerous rhetoric by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues as he threatens to invade Armenia and “continue until the end”. The history of the past century demonstrates the real threat of ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Turkish forces. The Genocide of 1915 is still denied by Turkey and yet President Erdogan threatens to continue ridding the land of Armenians.

In Turkey itself, the Armenian minority are facing growing intimidation and hate speech since the war began. They are not part of the Caucasus conflict themselves and have called for peace but still are targeted. Clear and immediate action is needed to stop the fighting and prevent further ethnic cleansing.  We call upon the United Kingdom, along with the United Nations, the OSCE Minsk Group and indeed the international community to act now.

n This letter was initiated by the Armenian Institute in the UK and signed by a group of academics, activists, artists, professionals and members of government and the House of Lords


U.S. lobbying firms drop Turkish, Azeri clients

Maghakian Mike
AHVAL News
Oct 25 2020

  • Nicholas Morgan
  • Oct 25 2020 09:11 Gmt+3
  • Last Updated On: Oct 25 2020 08:21 Gmt+3

Lobbying firms representing Turkey and Azerbaijan are finding themselves under pressure to reconsider their relationships with both clients.

On Friday, Mercury Public Affairs announced that it was ending its relationship with the government of Turkey. The news of this decision was revealed in a press release by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)’s Western Region in California.

“As a result of our community’s persistent activism and the steadfast support of our friends in elected office, I was just informed by Fabian Núñez, who is a partner at Mercury’s Los Angeles office, that Mercury Public Affairs would be terminating its registration as a foreign agent of
Turkey,” said Nora Hovsepian Chair of ANCA-WR’s Board of Directors in the statement.

Hovsepian praised the decision as “standing on the right side of history” in ending its relationship with Turkey, adding that it would serve as an example to other firms working for Turkey or Azerbaijan.

Mercury has represented Turkish interests in the United States since 2013 and was registered as an agent for both Turkey’s Washington D.C embassy and the Turkish-U.S. Business Council (TAIK). The firm had concluded a new $1 million in February to represent the embassy and as recently as last week Mercury was highlighting commercial ties between the United States and Turkey on TAIK’s behalf.

By choosing to end this relationship, Mercury is the latest lobbying firm to withdraw from contracts with Turkey or Azerbaijan.

DLA Piper, a white-shoe law firm headquartered in London, stated in a filing with the U.S. Department of Justice that it was no longer working on behalf of Azerbaijan Railways after one year working for it.

The Livingston Group, founded by former Republican congressman Bob Livingston, similarly withdrew from working for Azerbaijan on Oct. 13. This was only three months after declaring to the Justice Department it was negotiating a new contract with Baku. BGR Group also shared a filing declaring it was ending its contract with the Azeri state-owned oil company SOCAR.

Since fighting broke out on Sept. 28 territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s diaspora in the U.S has been actively looking for ways to build support against Azerbaijan as well as Turkey for its ironclad support of Baku. The decision by major lobbying firms to cut ties to both countries is seen as a sign their pressure campaign is bearing fruit.

Mercury has been specifically singled out by politicians and activists in California where many Armenian-Americans reside. Many U.S. politicians based in the state including the mayor of Los Angeles and many of its state and federal legislators have singled out Turkey for goading Azerbaijan into war with Armenia.

In Los Angeles, the city council called on Mercury to withdraw from its lobbying arrangement with Turkey or the city would withdraw from any business with the firm.

The letter, authored by Armenian-American Councilman Paul Krekorian, accused Turkey and Azerbaijan of seeking to continue the 1915 Armenian Genocide by engaging in the present conflict. It slammed Turkey in particular as the “worst abuser of human rights” and as a “belligerent imperialist that threatens world peace.”

“We will not engage with any firm in any capacity while it gives support to a client that so openly and unapologetically commits genocide, denies the truth of the genocide, and aids and encourages the war against the Republic of Artsakh,” read the council’s letter, using the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh.

In addition, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) announced it would terminate its contract with Mercury over its work for Turkey.

Turkish-American and Azerbaijani-American groups have vocally supported Azerbaijan and staged their own protests against Armenia in the United States as well.

On Oct. 14, 200 protestors gathered in Washington D.C and marched from Capitol Hill to the Turkish embassy in support of Azerbaijan.

Four days later, a protest organised by the Turkish-American National Steering Committee and the Azerbaijan New York Association staged a protest in front of the United Nations against what they called Armenian aggression.


Guatemala’s Sayaxché recognizes right to self-determination of people of Artsakh

Jalatian Sonya

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 16:37,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. The City Hall of Sayaxché, Guatemala has officially recognized the right to self-determination of the Armenians of Artsakh and is supporting the creation of a free and sovereign state.

Earlier on October 21, Guatemala lawmaker Carlos Lopez had released a statement, noting that he recognized the right to self determination of the Armenians of Artsakh.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

Armenia defense minister visits wounded soldiers

Liana Toganian

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 16:30,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Davit Tonoyan visited today soldiers wounded during the operation of neutralizing the Azerbaijani special operations team and destroying huge amount of equipment in the southern direction, Armenian defense ministry spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan said on Facebook.

On October 23, thanks to the successful operations of the Armenian forces in the southern direction of Artsakh, an entire special operations team of the adversary was neutralized, 9 military equipment were destroyed and many others were seized.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

Defense Ministry denies Azeri report on downing Armenian aircraft

Emil Lazarian

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 16:38,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. The Ministry of Defense of Armenia has denied the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry’s statement that claimed that an Armenian military aircraft was shot down.

“The report on a downed Armenian aircraft is a total lie,” Armenian Defense Ministry spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan