12:29,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. On 28 February, on the occasion of the 34th anniversary of the Sumgait pogroms, President of the Artsakh Republic Arayik Harutyunyan visited the Stepanakert memorial complex and laid flowers at the monument to the innocent victims.
The Head of State was accompanied by National Assembly Chairman Arthur Tovmasyan, top state and military leadership, public and political figures, the Artsakh presidency said.
13:02,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. The delegation of Ukraine arrived in the Belarusian Gomel region for negotiations with Russia, RIA Novosti reported.
It was reported that the Ukrainian delegation arrived by two helicopters.
The Ukrainian Presidential Office said that the delegation includes the Defense Minister, the head of the Servant of the People faction, the deputy foreign minister, the advisor to the head of the Office of the President, a Member of Parliament, and the first deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation in the Trilateral Contact Group.
13:11,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. Tehran welcomes negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and hopes that the dialogue will help resolve the crisis in the region, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a news conference, reports TASS.
“This is good news. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are precisely what we have called for from the very first day”, he said. “The political dialogue is a means of achieving a stable solution of the problems that have existed in the region for decades”.
Khatibzadeh added that the “ceasefire agenda must be advanced at the negotiations in earnest”.
13:20,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. Russian military are guarding and controlling the territory of the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant, official representative of the Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Monday, TASS reported.
“Russian servicemen are guarding and controlling the area around the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant”, Konashenkov noted.
According to Russian Defense Ministry’s representative, the workers of the power plant continue servicing facilities, they also control the level of radiation. “The level of radiation is normal”, he stated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people “who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years”. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.
13:49,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. Experts say the Azerbaijani actions against Armenians, including the pogroms in the Azerbaijani SSR, must be designated as genocide.
On February 28, at the initiative of MP Taguhi Tovmasyan, the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights Protection and Public Affairs, a conference-discussion took place with participation of academics on the occasion of the day of commemorating the memory of the victims of the pogroms in the Azerbaijani SSR and the protection of the rights of the forcefully displaced Armenian population.
“34 years ago during these days, the peaceful Armenian population was being subjected to mass violence, murder, torture, maiming, immolation by armed Azerbaijani gangs. Why were they killing Armenians? Simply for being Armenian, they were killing Armenians because Armenians wanted to live freely and with dignity in their homeland. It is actually difficult to imagine how much hate and Armenophobia the Azeri authorities instilled among Azerbaijanis, how much they aggravated calls for violence against Armenians that hundreds of Azerbaijanis of Sumgait committed such inhumane and cruel actions,” Tovmasyan said, describing the atrocities how armed Azerbaijani gangs, divided into groups, would attack Armenians by using a previously obtained list of their addresses, killing Armenians in their homes and in some cases dragging them outside and publicly humiliating them.
Tovmasyan stressed that these continuous and consistent actions of Azerbaijan constitute a state-sanctioned genocidal policy, based on which Azerbaijan launched the explicit aggression and large-scale war against Nagorno Karabakh in 1991, which continued decades later.
“30 years ago Azerbaijan sowed so much Armenophobia in its society that we witnessed inhumane atrocities during the 2020 war which Azerbaijan launched against Artsakh. Azerbaijan was committing more crimes against humanity and was killing the peaceful population, targeting kindergartens, schools and hospitals. And today, we are calling upon the international community, our international partners, that these criminal actions, crimes against humanity committed by Azerbaijan must receive an adequate response, assessment and treatment,” Tovmasyan said.
Dr. Ashot Melkonyan, the Director of the History Institute at the National Academy of Sciences, noted the importance of reminding the international community about this tragedy from time to time. “The political assessment that has been given so far hasn’t recorded genocide as a final term, I think it is one of our mistakes. I believe that our parliament must definitely address this and give a clear terming, that this is the full chain of the same genocidal policy which begins on February 6 in 1905 when the massacres of Armenians began in Baku, I am referring to the Armenian-Tatar fighting…” he said.
Melkonyan said the Azeri actions must be condemned and designated as genocide.
14:09,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan had a meeting on February 28 with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi within the framework of the session of the High Level segment of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the foreign ministry said in a press release.
Mirzoyan and Grandi were pleased to note the established dialogue between Armenia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Armenian FM said that Armenia, as a country that directly suffered from forced displacements, always supported the efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees aimed at the protection of the rights of persons who’ve suffered from forced displacements.
The humanitarian issues in Nagorno Karabakh after the 44-day war were addressed.
FM Mirzoyan highlighted the necessity for creating conditions for repatriation and protection of the security and rights of the Armenians of Artsakh who were forcibly displaced from their towns as a result of the Azerbaijani aggression.
FM Mirzoyan attached special importance to the implementation of humanitarian missions in Artsakh by international organizations, including by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and found Azerbaijan’s politicization of this issue and creation of artificial obstacles as inadmissible.
14:45,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. The negotiations between Russia and Ukraine kicked off in the Gomel region of Belarus, BelTA reports.
The Russian side arrived in Belarus yesterday, whereas the Ukrainian delegation arrived in the venue of talks two hours before their start.
The concrete place of the meeting is not mentioned for security purposes.
15:16,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. The government of Armenia plans to further increase the dram part in the composition of the debt in coming years.
Minister of Finance Tigran Khachatryan assures that the government debt is currently stable and manageable.
He gave an interview to ARMENPRESS about the topic.
-Mr. Minister, the state debt has exceeded the permissible limits. The government is going to submit a budgetary framework to the Parliament, through which it guarantees that it will return the debt to permissible limits. By the yearend the debt to GDP is expected to reach 60.2%. As a result of what is it expected to reach the permissible level, and when will the government submit that framework to the Parliament?
-There is no such range that is considered impermissible amount of debt. There are debt values which show being in a dangerous range. That law was in the past when a certain high debt was considered impermissible for the government. However, the further regulations, and they relate to the regulations made 2-3 years ago, have brought different approaches in use, with concrete necessary steps typical to each range. In particular, it is envisaged that when the debt rate passes the 60% of GDP by any year, the government, together with a medium-term expenditure program of each year, is also presenting its program approaches to the Parliament, on what it is going to do to improve the debt rate in the next five years or make the debt more manageable. That is the reason that when we were debating the 2022 state budget in the Parliament, I had a chance to state that our medium-term goal is to greatly improve our debt rates by following that policy. This year as well when we will present the medium-term expenditure program to the Parliament in summer, we will accompany it with a revise framework of debt management which, of course, will have slightly more promising figures with positive forecasts, than the previous medium-term forecasts, because the figures of 2021 are already proving it. We can say in advance that the main goals, which were presented to the Parliament last summer together with the 2022-2024 medium-term expenditure program, will happen a year earlier. In other words, if we were planning to achieve nearly 55% level towards GDP in 2025-2026, we will achieve slightly more improved figures. It is also theoretically possible to more quickly improve that situation.
-To what extent will there be a revision?
-Our target is to have debt figures of about 54-55% by 2026. I also want to explain why we don’t want to reduce it faster. It is possible in practice because both our high economic growth rates and the increase of own revenues towards them in accordance with the government’s policy allow to think that we will have much more tax revenues and more means to conduct expenditures on our own, than it could be predicted from the very start. In that case, we could carry out both ongoing expenditures and those directed to capital or development programs at the expense of these own revenues, and have a less need or demand for attracting debt. But on the other hand, given that our debt is currently at a manageable range and is not a worrying phenomenon, we do not rule out that we may keep that new borrowings at a level which is supposed now, and to direct them for new development programs.
-Will that 60.2% debt to GDP be maintained by the end of this year?
-We think it will be within 60% in the end of this year. We plan to further increase the dram part in the composition of the debt in coming years, currently the dram debt is about 28%. When we have a dram debt, we do not bear exchange rate risks, no matter what the exchange rate for the main foreign exchange units will be by the end of the year, the debt in dram terms to our GDP will be the same.
-How much is the state debt at the moment? To what extent is that level justified, and don’t you consider it risky?
-I already said that it is not risky, it is within reliable range. According to the latest data, the government debt is assessed to be about 4 trillion 252 billion drams (8 billion 812 million dollars). If we talk from the perspective of the state debt, the debt of the Central Bank is currently 227 billion drams. They are in a reliable, manageable range and from macroeconomic terms do not contain any uncertainty both in terms of the debt size and servicing capacities.
Full version of the interview is available in Armenian.
Interview by Anna Grigoryan
Photos by Tatev Duryan
15:34,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. The First Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Kamo Kochunts will be the acting Chief of General Staff, the Ministry of Defense told ARMENPRESS.
The position became vacant when Chief of General Staff Artak Davtyan was dismissed on February 24.
17:15,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. On February 28, head of the Civil Contract faction of the Armenian Parliament Hayk Konjoryan received the Special Envoy of Canada to the European Union and Europe Stéphane Dion, the Parliament’s press service said.
The officials discussed the procedure of the democratic reforms in Armenia, and in this context, the perspectives of the Armenian-Canadian cooperation.
The works in the sphere of parliamentary diplomacy and the cooperation between the two countries on the international platforms were highlighted.
The possibilities of the institutional capacity development of the Armenian Parliament were discussed.