Tuesday,
Karabakh Official Objects To EU Mediation
• Narine Ghalechian
Belgium - European Council President Charles Michel, Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev meet in Brussels, May 22,
2022.
The European Union is unfit to be the lead player in brokering a settlement of
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a senior official in Stepanakert said on Tuesday.
“For us, the European Council (the EU’s top decision-making body) is not the
format where issues of the resolution of the Karabakh conflict should be
discussed because it is the OSCE Minsk Group which has an international mandate
to do that and which we believe must be the main format,” said Artak Beglarian,
the Karabakh state minister. “There is also the trilateral format of Armenia,
Russia and Azerbaijan which has demonstrated its effectiveness in practice.”
“I don’t think that the European Council has the potential and interests to play
a very serious role in a final and comprehensive settlement of the conflict,”
Beglarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The EU should focus on other issues such as protection of the Karabakh
Armenians’ “humanitarian rights” and preservation of their cultural legacy, he
said.
The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, has hosted three trilateral
meetings with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the last five months.
After the most recent meeting held on May 22, Michel said that Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to
“advance discussions” on a comprehensive peace treaty between their countries.
He said he told them that it is “necessary that the rights and security of the
ethnic Armenian population in Karabakh be addressed.”
Karabakh’s leadership denounced the latter remark, saying that the top EU
official undermined the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination by
portraying them as an ethnic minority not eligible for independent statehood.
Beglarian likewise suggested that Michel signaled support for Azerbaijani
control over the disputed territory.
Nagorno Karabakh Sate Minister Artak Beglarian, July 1, 2021
The previous Armenian-Azerbaijani summit held in Brussels on April 6 also raised
concerns in Stepanakert. Pashinian said on April 13 that the international
community is pressing Armenia to “lower the bar” on Karabakh’s status and
recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. He signaled Yerevan’s intention to
make such concessions, prompting strong criticism from Karabakh leaders.
Russia has criticized the EU’s mediation efforts, saying that they are part of
the West’s attempts to hijack Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks and use the
Karabakh conflict in its standoff with Moscow over Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, accused the EU last
week of trying to “wedge” into the implementation of Armenian-Azerbaijani
agreements brokered by Moscow. “We hope that Brussels will help implement them,
and not try to play geopolitical games,” she said.
Russia has co-headed the Minsk Group together with the United States and France
for nearly three decades. Russian officials say Washington and Paris stopped
cooperating with Moscow in that format after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Pashinian Sees Strong Growth Despite Ukraine War Fallout
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks in the parliament, .
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Tuesday that the Armenian economy should
expand by 7 percent this year contrary to far more modest growth forecasts made
by Western lending institutions following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
The International Monetary Fund insisted as recently as on April 29 that
economic growth in Armenia will slow down to about 1.5 percent due to the
fallout from the bloody conflict. The Armenian Central Bank forecast a virtually
identical growth rate in mid-March, three weeks after the start of the Russian
invasion of Ukraine.
The World Bank predicted an even sharper slowdown in a report released on April
11. The bank pointed to the South Caucasus country’s close economic ties with
Russia, its number one trading partner hit by sweeping Western sanctions.
Pashinian said, however, that he expects the domestic economy to perform much
better in 2022. He cited key macroeconomic data recorded by his government in
the first four months of the year.
According to the government’s Statistical Committee, GDP growth accelerated to
8.6 percent in the first quarter and continued unabated in April on the back of
sharps gains in the services and construction sectors. By contrast, Armenian
industrial output shrunk by about 7 percent year on year in March and rebounded
only marginally in April.
Addressing pro-government lawmakers in Yerevan, Pashinian indicated that he
hopes to keep up the growth in the months ahead with capital projects financed
from the state budget.
“My instruction and mood is that we must concentrate on the execution of our
budget, especially capital spending, so that we manage to meet our target of 7
percent economic growth,” he said.
Tadevos Avetisian, an opposition lawmaker and economist, dismissed Pashinian’s
projection, saying that spillover effects of the war in Ukraine have not yet
reached Armenia.
Avetisian downplayed the significance of official macroeconomic statistics for
January-April 2022. He argued that the Armenian economy contracted in the first
quarter of 2021.
Parliament Majority To Block Opposition Resolution On Karabakh
• Artak Khulian
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Riot police guard a government building during an opposition
demonstration in Yerevan, .
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian reaffirmed on Tuesday the ruling Civil Contract
party’s plans to block an opposition resolution rejecting any peace accord that
would restore Azerbaijan’s control over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia’s leading opposition forces drafted the parliamentary resolution last
week as they continued daily demonstrations in Yerevan demanding Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s resignation. They will try to push it through the National
Assembly at an emergency session scheduled for Friday.
Simonian confirmed that the parliament’s pro-government majority will thwart the
session by boycotting it.
Like other Pashinian allies, Simonian accused the opposition Hayastan and Pativ
Unem blocs of exploiting the Karabakh conflict for political purposes. He also
said that the draft resolution is aimed at reinvigorating what he described as a
failed opposition campaign for Pashinian’s resignation.
“That [opposition] initiative is yet another attempt to find some way out of the
situation,” Simonian told journalists.
Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian speaks to journalists, .
The speaker, who is a senior member of Civil Contract, insisted that Pashinian’s
government will not cut any peace deals with Azerbaijan that will “not take into
account the opinion of Artsakh and Armenia’s citizens.” But he stopped short of
ruling out Yerevan’s recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
“They are afraid of doing that because they have given [Azerbaijani President
Ilham] Aliyev promises,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, an opposition leader and
parliament vice-speaker. “They are afraid because one and a half years after the
war [in Karabakh] they have increased only the number of police and interior
troops, while the army has been downsized.”
The opposition accused Pashinian of planning to place Karabakh back under
Azerbaijani rule when it launched the street protests in Yerevan on May 1.
The parliamentary resolution proposed by it not only rejects such an option but
also says Pashinian’s government cannot make any territorial concessions to
Azerbaijan as a result of a planned demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border. It further says that the demarcation process must start only after Baku
frees all Armenian prisoners and withdraws Azerbaijani troops from Armenian
border areas occupied last year.
Armenia - An opposition supporter waves a Karabakh flag outside a goverment
building guarded by riot police, .
The protests continued on Tuesday, with hundreds of people led by Saghatelian
and other opposition lawmakers marching to a government building that houses
three Armenian ministries. The lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to meet with the
ministers of foreign affairs, education and justice and hear their opinion about
Karabakh’s status. They did not attempt to force their way into the building
heavily guarded by riot police.
The oppositionists’ attempt to break through a similar police cordon on Monday
triggered clashes between their supporters and security forces outside the
common building of four other government ministries. More than a hundred
protesters were detained as a result.
Nine of them remained under arrest on Tuesday. Law-enforcement authorities said
they could be prosecuted for participating in “mass disturbances.”
Saghatelian claimed that the authorities are “fabricating” such criminal cases
in a bid to suppress the opposition movement. “In this way they are trying to
isolate participants of the movement and intimidate other citizens,” he said.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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