PanARMENIAN.Net - NATO supports the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to Javier Colomina, the NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs & Security Policy and Special Representative for the Caucasus & Central Asia.
Colomina said in a tweet on Tuesday, July 19 that the matter was discussed at a meeting between NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.
Armenian Minister of High-tech Industry, Robert Khachatryan, received the delegation of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Russia company, headed by Director General Yasushi Kakitsuka.
Minister Khachatryan briefed the guests on the current state, developments and challenges of Armenia’s high-tech industry, pointed out possible ways of cooperation.
Yasushi Kakitsuka, in turn, detailed the directions and areas of the company’s activity, outlined possible scenarios of interaction.
During the meeting, a number of issues of bilateral interest were discussed. The parties emphasized that cooperation can be a serious bridge for the formation of new business ties and development of activities. Opinions were also exchanged regarding the possibilities of organizing meetings with technology companies and holding discussions on projects.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Russia intends to outline ways of cooperation with the Armenian government, and launch activities in Armenia.
https://en.armradio.am/2022/07/20/mitsubishi-heavy-industries-russia-planning-to-launch-activities-in-armenia/
Human rights groups have criticized an EU deal to ramp up gas supplies from Azerbaijan, as Europe scrambles to secure non-Russian sources of energy, The Guardian reports.
The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Monday hailed Azerbaijan as a “crucial” and “reliable” energy supplier, as she announced an agreement with Baku to expand the southern gas corridor, the 3,500km pipeline taking Caspian Sea gas to Europe.
Standing alongside Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, Von der Leyen said the EU was diversifying away from Russia and turning “towards more reliable, trustworthy partners”, adding she was glad to count Azerbaijan among them.
Under the agreement, gas supplies to the EU from Azerbaijan are forecast to reach 20bn cubic meters a year in 2027, up from 8bn currently. Supplies are set to increase to 12bn by 2023.
Human Rights Watch said the EU should not have signed the memorandum, nor enter a mooted new bilateral agreement, without insisting on political reforms: the release of scores of political prisoners and changes to laws that heavily restrict non-governmental organizations and the media.
Azerbaijan uses oil and gas “to silence the EU on fundamental rights issues,” said Philippe Dam, acting EU director at Human Rights Watch. “The reality is that Azerbaijan authorities have been famous for cracking down on civil society activists investigating corruption, especially when it comes to oil and gas.”
“The EU should not say a country is reliable when it is restricting the activities of civil society groups and crushing political dissent,” Dam said.
Other campaigners accused the EU of undermining its climate goals, while enriching autocrats. “It is extraordinary that the EU seems intent on not learning from its current predicament, and is pushing to build more pipelines which would lock us into gas in the long term,” said Barnaby Pace, a senior gas campaigner at Global Witness. “A rapid boost for renewable energy and home insulation should be the obvious answer to the crises Europe is staring at – and certainly not repeating the mistakes that have taken us to this point.”
Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s Brussels office, said “repressive and unaccountable regimes are rarely reliable partners” and added that “privileging short-term objectives at the expense of human rights is a recipe for disaster.”
Bilateral consultations were held in Moscow on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov.
During the negotiations, the parties exchanged ideas on a wide range of issues related to relations with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, prospects for the development of multilateral cooperation in the Eurasian area, cooperation with the SCO, as well as issues related to the “North-South” international transport corridor. The importance of combining approaches in the Asian direction was emphasized.
Mnatsakan Safaryan and Igor Morgulov emphasized the continuation of the practice of conducting consultations on issues of bilateral interest.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday released the 2022 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.
For the second year in a row, Armenia is on Tier 2, in recognition of its overall increasing efforts towards the elimination of trafficking as compared with the previous reporting period, the U.S. Embassy in Armenia reports.
These efforts included prosecuting more traffickers and identifying more victims. Courts convicted a labor trafficker for the first time since 2014. The government adopted screening indicators for use by social workers, amended procedures to standardize data collection and information sharing, and provided comprehensive training to relevant staff.
The report also notes that Armenia does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and suggests areas for future improvement, particularly in victim identification and labor trafficking. The United States is committed to partnering with Armenia to advance its anti-trafficking efforts.
The full report is available here.
Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan stresses the need to take relations between Armenia and Iran to a new level of strategic partnership.
His comments came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned against attempts to “block” the Armenian-Iranian border at a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.
“If there is a policy to block the border between Iran and Armenia, the Islamic Republic will oppose it since this border has been a communication route for thousands of years,” Khamenei said.
He made a similar statement at a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Islamic Republic will not tolerate policies or plans that lead to the closing of the Iran-Armenia border,” Khamenei said in a tweet, separately.
“Remarkably, Syunik remains Armenian primarily thanks to Iran. Thus, Armenian-Iranian relations should be taken to a new strategic level, making it one of the foundations of our new security architecture,” Geghamyan wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Also, he condemned the Armenian authorities for handing over a section of the existing Armenia-Iran highway to Azerbaijan.
“Instead of deepening cooperation with Iran, Armenia’s capitulant authorities ceded the only road connecting Armenia and Iran to Azerbaijan, and there is no new [alternative] road,” the expert said.
No effective mechanisms are in place to tackle rising inflation and dram appreciation in Armenia, according to Babken Pipoyan, head of the Informed and Protected Consumer NGO.
He claims that social benefit recipients, pensioners and those who receive financial assistance from abroad are hit hardest by “relentless” price increases.
“The worst thing is that the rising trend in prices continues. A higher inflation rate is recorded with each passing month,” Pipoyan told Panorama.am in an interview on Tuesday, stressing the people’s incomes are not keeping up with rising prices.
Citing fresh data from the National Statistical Committee, the specialist says that food prices have increased by more than 17%, which may lead to empty calorie consumption and malnutrition.
"Now it is necessary not to deal with inflation itself, but to implement appropriate policies covering the relevant areas. Measures should be taken to reduce the cost of local products and support social groups, programs aimed at increasing incomes of the people should be implemented. Conventionally, the amount of income tax can be revised. It is not the best solution, but it is one of them,” he said.
Political analyst Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan has reacted to Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan’s statement on the “withdrawal of Armenian troops from Artsakh”.
“Due to the [2020] war, a number of Armenian army units entered Nagorno-Karabakh to help its Defense Army,” he told Armenpress on Tuesday.
“They are returning to Armenia after the establishment of the ceasefire [in November 2020]. This process is nearing completion and will end in September. As for the Defense Army, it has been in Nagorno-Karabakh and will remain there,” the security chief said.
His comments came after the meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Georgia on July 16.
“As far as I know, there are no Armenian army units in Artsakh, while demobilization of conscripts is not a reason to make a political statement. Thus, we can assume that the discussed issue is much more substantial than it may seem at the first glance. In this case it must be about the removal of military equipment from Artsakh,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
“I am sure that by saying "units of the Armenian armed forces", the current authorities mean the military equipment in Artsakh, the withdrawal of which has long been demanded by Azerbaijan,” he added.
Armenia’s former Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan has submitted an alternative report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) regarding Azerbaijan's policy of Armenophobia and has made recommendations for investigation.
“The report submitted to the UN committee shows that the policy of Armenophobia and hatred towards Armenians based on their religion and ethnicity has actually been pursued in Azerbaijan for years,” Tatoyan said on Facebook.
“The Azerbaijani authorities continue to incite hatred towards the people of Armenia and Artsakh through official statements, making threats and insulting comments,” he said, adding Armenian women and children often become targets of hate speech in Azerbaijan.
“I have urged the UN Committee to:
1. Investigate and reveal racial hatred and enmity spread against Armenians by Azerbaijani authorities, including senior officials, cultural and other public figures, and to hold those responsible to account.
2. Investigate hate crimes committed by the Azerbaijani military in September-November 2020, during the April 2016 war and other Azerbaijani armed attacks
3. Condemn and take measures to effectively prevent Armenophobia and racial discrimination against Armenians in Azerbaijan, ensuring the return of all Armenian captives illegally held in Azerbaijan," Tatoyan said.
ArmInfo. The influence of the Russian Federation in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe will sharply decrease in the foreseeable period. This is due to the intermediate Ukrainian results of the geopolitical confrontation between the Russian Federation and the collective West. Independent political analyst Saro Saroyan expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
"In particular, the Russian Federation and Turkey have a very specific plan regarding the South Caucasus, namely, to finally turn the region exclusively into their zone of influence, excluding any role of the West here. It is clear that this, in turn, implies the withdrawal of the USA and the EU from the Karabakh settlement, along with the destruction of the Armenian factor in the region. However, the current course of military operations in Ukraine has completely defeated the implementation of all these agreements between Moscow and Ankara," he emphasized.
According to the analyst, as a result, Moscow was forced to reckon with the Brussels negotiation format between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as some other new geopolitical realities in the region, which still remains its priority zone of influence. While the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war was laid precisely by the 44-day war. In Saroyan's opinion, in this way, Russia tried to insure its southern borders against possible destabilization, in fact, anticipating it. And after that, try to solve its problems in Ukraine. According to him, all this was due to the impossibility for Russia to solve such problems without the consent of Turkey.
According to the analyst, over the past few hundred years, the essence of relations between the Russian and Ottoman empires, by and large, has not changed and, as before, rests on rivalry for the straits and hegemony in the Black Sea. That is why Moscow did not have the opportunity to resist the West, ensuring tectonic shifts in Ukraine, in particular on the Black Sea coast, without agreements with Ankara. And regarding Artsakh, Turkey and the Russian Federation fulfilled the agreements. However, all this did not find a continuation in the Ukrainian direction, primarily due to Moscow's inability to force Kyiv to stop the war and secure its own territorial and other acquisitions.