Thursday, July 6, 2023
Karabakh Rejects Azeri Demands To Disband Army
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Nagorno Karabakh - Sergey Ghazarian, the Karabakh foreign minister.
Nagorno-Karabakh will continue to reject Azerbaijan’s demands to disband its
armed forces, a senior Karabakh official said on Thursday.
Sergei Ghazarian, the Karabakh foreign minister, said the existence of the
Defense Army remains essential in the face of what he described as existential
threats to Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population.
“Seeing how the Azerbaijani side’s aggressive actions and rhetoric are gaining
momentum, it’s obviously not realistic to discuss the dissolution of the Defense
Army or the state system,” Ghazarian told reporters.
In recent months, Baku has repeatedly threatened military action against
Karabakh’s “illegal armed formations” that were supported by Armenia until the
2020 war and significantly downsized since then. Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev said on Wednesday that they must be
“disarmed” and disbanded.
Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, said last week that this is
Azerbaijan’s main precondition for negotiating with Stepanakert. He also
complained that Baku is only willing to discuss the Armenian-populated region’s
“integration” into Azerbaijan.
One of Harutiunian’s political allies told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday
that this is the reason why Karabakh’s leaders turned down last month a U.S.
proposal to meet with Azerbaijani officials in a neutral location for
integration talks.
Ghazarian said, however, that they did not refuse to negotiate with Baku. He
stressed at the same time that Stepanakert cannot negotiate “under pressure” and
that the Azerbaijani side must first unblock emergency food supplies to Karabakh
through the Lachin corridor.
“There can be no dialogue with preconditions,” he said. “The other side must
demonstrate that it is ready for dialogue. But if they close the road, how can
we be sure that they are ready for dialogue?”
Ghazarian also confirmed that Harutiunian last week appealed to Russian
President Vladimir Putin to help lift the eight-month Azerbaijani blockade of
Karabakh’s only land link with the outside world. He said Stepanakert
specifically hopes that the Russian peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh will
“make every effort” for that purpose in line with the Russian-brokered ceasefire
that stopped the 2020 war.
Putin discussed the matter with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in a
phone call on Wednesday. Harutiunian said he asked Pashinian to phone the
Russian leader.
U.S. Envoy Clarifies Karabakh Remarks
Armenia - Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Kristina Kvien hands her credentials
to Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturian, February 22, 2023.
The United States is not trying to predetermine the outcome of
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks with pro-Azerbaijani statements, the U.S.
ambassador to Armenia, Kristina Kvien, insisted on Thursday.
Kvien responded to an uproar caused by her interview with Armenian Public
Television aired on Monday. In particular, she told the state-run broadcaster
that Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population could live safely under
Azerbaijani rule.
Armenian opposition figures as well as Karabakh’s leadership criticized the
remarks. The Karabakh foreign ministry said on Wednesday the United States
should refrain from “appeasing the aggressor” keen to commit “ethnic cleansing”
in Karabakh. It also said that the U.S. and other mediating powers “must not
predetermine the outcome” of the ongoing peace talks in the first place.
“The United States does not presuppose the outcome of negotiations on the future
of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Kvien said in written comments to the Armenpress news
agency.
“The question of the rights and security of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh
is central to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Ultimately ensuring
that this population can feel secure in their homes and have their rights
protected is the only way to guarantee a lasting settlement to a conflict that
has lasted too long and cost too many lives,” added the diplomat.
Kvien did not say whether she believes Azerbaijan can ensure that if it regains
full control of Karabakh.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has pledged to recognize Azerbaijani
sovereignty over the Armenian-populated region through a bilateral peace treaty.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers discussed the treaty in great
detail during two rounds of marathon talks hosted by Washington in early May and
late June. Pashinian praised the U.S. peace efforts earlier this week.
Pashinian Reaffirms Commitment To ‘Peace Agenda’
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses the Armenian parliament,
Yerevan, May 24, 2023.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday that he will continue to push
for a comprehensive peace accord with Azerbaijan despite what he described as
Baku’s intention to commit “genocide” in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian again decried Azerbaijan’s continuing blockage of the Lachin corridor
and mounting pressure on Karabakh, saying that this policy is aimed at
“subjecting the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
“Basically, we are seeing a creeping implementation of that policy in
Nagorno-Karabakh,” he charged during a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
Pashinian made clear that in these circumstances he will not deviate from his
“peace agenda” denounced by his domestic political opponents as well as
Karabakh’s leadership. Armenian opposition leaders claim that Baku was
emboldened by his readiness to sign a peace treaty upholding Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Karabakh. They maintain that the Karabakh Armenians will have
to flee their homeland in that case.
“The rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh should be
addressed within the framework of international mechanisms for a
Baku-Stepanakert dialogue, and a peace treaty should be signed between Armenia
and Azerbaijan,” insisted Pashinian.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers reportedly narrowed their
governments’ differences over the treaty during another round of U.S.-mediated
negotiations held in and outside Washington last month.
Pashinian cautioned that the progress made by them was “not significant.” Still,
he expressed hope that he and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will build on
that progress during their next meeting in Brussels expected later this week.
Aliyev on Wednesday demanded that Armenia withdraw “the remnants” of its troops
from Karabakh and that the Karabakh Armenians disarm and disband their military
forces. He also complained that Yerevan remains reluctant to open a “corridor”
that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian
territory.
Pashinian rejected Aliyev’s “baseless accusations.” He reiterated that Armenia
“has no troops in Karabakh” and that the Russian-brokered agreement that stopped
the 2020 war calls for conventional Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links, rather
than an extraterritorial corridor for Nakhichevan.
Armenian Hospitals Accused Of Refusing Free Healthcare
• Narine Ghalechian
Armenia - A newly renovated ward at the Fanarjian National Center of Oncology,
Yerevan, October 8, 2022.
Scores of Armenians eligible for free healthcare financed by the state complain
that hospitals across the country have stopped providing such services due to an
alleged lack of government funding.
In the absence of a national system of health insurance, successive Armenian
governments have for decades covered the cost of some surgeries, tests and other
medical procedures. The beneficiaries of this subsidized coverage currently
include cancer patients and some socially vulnerable categories of the
population.
Many such individuals have claimed in recent weeks that the mostly private
hospitals refuse to treat them free of charge on the grounds that they have
already run out of government funding allocated for this year.
“The hospital just told me that the money provided by the state has run out,”
said Gevorg Safarian, a young man who was seriously wounded during the 2020 war
in Nagorno-Karabakh. He was due to have an X-ray examination and blood test
there.
Armine Khachatrian, a woman who recently underwent breast cancer surgery, heard
the same explanation when she was denied a post-operative computer tomography
scan in another Yerevan clinic. “They told me to come in the beginning of 2024,”
she said.
Nvard Kocharian, the founder of a Yerevan-based NGO helping patients like
Khachatrian, said that about 70 such women have asked her organization for
financial assistance after encountering the same problem.
In an online poll organized by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service last week, more than
700 citizens likewise claimed to have been denied free medical services on the
same grounds.
Armenia - Health Minister Anahit Avanesian visits the Armenian company Liqvor
producing Sputnik Light vaccine, Yerevan, December 6, 2021.
Health Minister Anahit Avanesian on Thursday categorically denied a lack of
government funding for such services, which is due to total 118 billion drams
($304 million) this year, up from 112 billion drams in 2022. She linked the
problem to the recent introduction of electronic registration for the subsidized
coverage which gives priority to patients who are in urgent need of surgery or
other treatment.
Other citizens eligible for free healthcare must now wait their turn, Avanesian
said, adding that she has ordered the Ministry of Health to provide additional
funding to hospitals so that they cut their waiting lists.
“If a citizen is signed up for, say, September, their registration date will be
brought forward and they will get a service much quicker,” she assured
journalists.
An RFE/RL reporter posing as the mother of a chronically ill child phoned
several hospitals to inquire about a free service. One of them said it cannot be
provided this year while the others refused to give any information at all.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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