Thursday, February 3, 2022
Baku Again Rejects Armenian Proposals On Border Demarcation
• Artak Khulian
BELGIUM -- Azerbaijani Foreign minister Ceyhun Bayramov is seen at the start of
a EU-Azerbaijan Cooperation Council at the European Council building in
Brussels, December 18, 2020
Azerbaijan again rejected on Thursday Armenia’s conditions for demarcating the
long border between the two states where deadly skirmishes break out on a
regular basis.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
pledged to set up a joint commission on border delimitation and demarcation
during a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin held in Sochi
last November.
The Armenian government said last month that the commission should start its
work after a set of confidence-building measures, notably the withdrawal of
Armenian and Azerbaijani troops from their border posts.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov repeated on Thursday that Baku
wants an unconditional start of the demarcation process and that the Armenian
proposals are therefore unacceptable to it.
“Armenia, which occupied Azerbaijani lands for 30 years, does not have a legal,
political or moral right to set any conditions for the border demarcation,” he
said.
Official Yerevan did not immediately react to Bayramov’s remarks. Speaking with
journalists earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan confirmed that
Baku objects to “measures which we believe would create security mechanisms on
the border.”
“This is an ongoing process,” Mirzoyan said, downplaying the rebuff. “It’s not
that we proposed something once and they rejected it. There have also been
[Azerbaijani] proposals unacceptable to us.”
Responding to Bayramov’s earlier reaction to Yerevan’s “preconditions,” the
Armenian Foreign Ministry said on January 20 that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed on
the mutual troop withdrawal during their follow-up negotiations held in Brussels
in December.
Russia regularly calls for a quick start of the demarcation process, saying that
it would minimize ceasefire violations along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The process is due to be mediated and facilitated by Russian officials.
Two senior European diplomats discussed the matter with Aliyev and Pashinian
when they visited Baku and Yerevan last month. Toivo Klaar, the European Union’s
special representative to the South Caucasus, described the talks as “excellent.”
Armenian Hospitals Again Under Strain As Omicron Spreads Fast
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia -- A medical worker takes notes at the Surp Grigor Lusarovich Medical
Center in Yerevan, the country's largest hospital treating coronavirus patients,
June 5, 2020.
Health authorities pledged on Thursday to again boost capacity at Armenia’s
hospitals to cope with the latest surge in coronavirus cases driven by the
Omicron variant.
The Ministry of Health reported in the morning a new single-day record for
cases. It said that about half of some 9,600 coronavirus tests administered in
the country of about 3 million in the past 24 hours came back positive.
The ministry recorded only between 100 and 150 infections a day before detecting
the first Omicron cases in early January. The highly contagious variant of the
virus has been rapidly spreading for the last two weeks.
Citing expert analysis, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian predicted that the daily
number of cases will keep rising for at least one more week.
“We use certain algorithms and hope that the numbers will not exceed the
forecast maximum,” he said during a cabinet meeting. “And we are now taking
measures in order to properly confront that wave.”
“In line with a contingency plan, our [healthcare] system is resorting to yet
another deployment of more hospital beds,” Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said
for her part. “The system is now working in a tense regime to properly organize
both preventive measures and medical aid to our population.”
Officials put the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at 1,543. More than
83 percent of them are not vaccinated.
Roughly one-third of the country’s population has received two doses of a
coronavirus vaccine to date. And only about 9,000 “booster” shots were
administered as of January 30, according to the Ministry of Health.
“The vaccination rate is certainly very low, and we must take measures to
increase it,” said Pashinian.
The government introduced on January 22 a mandatory health pass for entry to
cultural and leisure venues. Only those people who have been vaccinated against
COVID-19 or have had a recent negative test are allowed to visit them.
Some restaurant owners have criticized the measure, saying that the average
number of their customers has fallen as a result.
President-In-Waiting Vows To Cooperate With Government
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - High-Tech Industry Minister Vahagn Khachatrian attends a cabinet
meeting in Yerevan, February 3, 2022.
The ruling Civil Contract party’s presidential candidate, High-Tech Industry
Minister Vahagn Khachatrian, said on Thursday that he will try to avoid
conflicts with the Armenian government if he is elected by the parliament.
Khachatrian told reporters that he will strive to “find solutions through
dialogue and discussion,” rather than confrontation. He would not say whether he
will stand up to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian if necessary.
Civil Contract officially nominated Khachatrian for the vacant post on Wednesday
ten days after former President Armen Sarkissian unexpectedly announced his
resignation, complaining about his largely ceremonial powers. The ruling party
controls enough parliament seats to install the 62-year-old economist as the
next president of the republic.
Pashinian said on January 24 that the new president must be in sync with his
administration. He said there was a lack of such “political harmony” about a
year ago when the Armenian army top brass demanded his resignation, deepening a
political crisis resulting from Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
The premier seemed to refer to Sarkissian’s reluctance to quickly rubber-stamp
his decision to fire the country’s top general.
Pashinian similarly said on Thursday that the president and the government must
share a “common strategy” and avoid “opposite movements.”
“This doesn’t mean that everyone must have the same view on every issue,” he
said. “It means arriving at common conclusions and opinions as a result of
discussions.”
Khachatrian faulted the former president for not always finding common ground
with the executive and legislative branches of Armenia’s government.
Opposition politicians and other critics of the government believe that
Sarkissian was on the contrary too subservient to Pashinian during his nearly
four-year presidency.
Pashinian Reports More Progress Towards Rail Link With Azerbaijan
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - A disused railway leading to Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan region.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are “very close” to implementing their Russian-brokered
agreement to open a rail link between the two South Caucasus states, Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday.
He confirmed that this was the main theme of talks held by Russia’s Deputy Prime
Minister Alexei Overchuk and the head of Russian Railways (RZD) state monopoly,
Oleg Belozerov, in Yerevan on Wednesday. They met with Armenian Deputy Prime
Minister Mher Grigorian.
“We are very close to registering the first practical results of the trilateral
[Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani] working group on opening regional communication
routes,” Pashinian said, commenting on the talks at the start of a weekly
session of his cabinet.
“We are already discussing defining technical specifications and designing and
financing [the project] and starting construction,” he added without going into
details.
The planned 45-kilometer railway will connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan
exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province. The Armenian government set up last
month a task force that will coordinate its construction, which is expected to
cost about $200 million.
The head of the task force, Artashes Tumanian, was also present at Grigorian’s
meeting with the visiting Russian officials.
Armenia - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk at a meeting with
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, November 5, 2021.
“Yesterday’s meeting was very practical indeed,” Tumanian told Pashinian. “The
Russian side presented its vision.”
Grigorian said, for his part, that the Armenian side will closely cooperate with
Russian Railways in implementing the railway project. He argued that the Russian
operator manages Armenia’s railway network, called the South Caucasus Railway
(SRC), and has ample experience in railway construction.
It remained unclear when work on the Syunik railway will start. Nor did
Pashinian and Grigorian say whether the construction will be financed by the
Armenian government, Russian Railways or international donors.
Neither Grigorian’s office nor the SRC could be reached for comment.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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