WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in the US Senate on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would halt US military aid to Azerbaijan for the next two fiscal years.

If passed by the House and signed by the president, the bill, known as the Armenian Protection Act of 2023, would block the State Department’s ability to issue a waiver required under existing law in order for the United States to send military aid to Baku.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), received bipartisan support.

Why it matters: The vote is Congress' clearest move yet to block US military assistance to Baku in the wake of its swift military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in September.

Last month, 91 lawmakers from both chambers penned a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for economic sanctions against Azerbaijani government officials for Baku’s “military attacks and brutal blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee Jack Reed (D-RI) and the then-chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez (D-NJ), urged Blinken in their own letter not to extend the administration’s waiver in response to Azerbaijan’s invasion of the until recently predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave on Sept. 19. 

The Biden administration has balked at renewing the waiver, known as a Section 907, for the October 2001-enacted exemption to a 1992 law restricting US government aid to Azerbaijan until it takes “demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh."

On Thursday, the State Department's top official for European and Eurasian Affairs, Ambassador James O’Brien, told House lawmakers during a hearing that the Biden administration had no plans to issue a new Section 907 waiver.

US administrations have repeatedly issued the waiver since the exemption was introduced in 2002, citing national security concerns. From 2002-2020, Washington provided about $164 million in security assistance to Azerbaijan, according to the US Government Accountability Office.

What happened: Azerbaijan invaded the Nagorno-Karabakh region following a 10-month blockade of the Lachin corridor connecting the Armenian-majority enclave to Armenia.

The modern roots of the conflict date back at least to 1920, but it was largely frozen during the rule of the Soviet Union. Armenia took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor in 1994, though the disputed territory is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

More than 100,000 people fled toward Armenia in the span of a week amid Azerbaijan's assault in September. The move was widely condemned, including by the United States and members of the European Parliament. Armenian officials and Western experts characterized the result of the invasion as ethnic cleansing. 

“The Armenian Protection Act of 2023 is simple: It would hold Azerbaijan accountable for these actions,” Peters said Thursday. “As a result of Azerbaijan’s failure to meet the terms of our agreement, it would prevent the United States from sending military aid for a period of two years.”  

“The [Biden] administration already has the authority to cut off this support, but as this conflict has unfolded, they have not taken public action,” he said.

Know more: Read Amberin Zaman's dispatch from southern Armenia in the immediate aftermath of the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh in October.

Bilateral dialogue between India and Armenia is conducted through the mechanism of Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) and Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, economic, scientific, technological, cultural and educational Cooperation (IGC). The 7th IGC and 8th FOC were held in Yerevan on 01 April 2016. The 9th round of FOC was held in a virtual format on 18 February 2022. The 8th session of the India-Armenia IGC was held in Yerevan on 04 July 2022, according to the Ministry. (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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MOSCOW

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed on Saturday that his country has managed to reach an agreement with Azerbaijan over the basic principles of a peace settlement.

However, the two countries continue to speak "different diplomatic languages" because of that they do not understand each other, Pashinyan said at the opening of the parliamentary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Armenia's capital of Yerevan.

The Armenian leader also said the two countries' protracted conflict over the Karabakh region is taking its toll.

Pashinyan's remarks came the day after a UN International Criminal Court hearing on Armenia's lawsuit against Azerbaijan.

Armenia accuses Baku of violating the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination due to the recent escalation of tensions in Karabakh, though UN agencies earlier categorically stated that they had not recorded any cases of Azerbaijan's discriminatory attitude toward Armenians.

Earlier in September, Armenia ratified the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court, with the goal of suing Azerbaijan over its actions in Karabakh.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement and also opened the door to normalization.

This September, the Azerbaijani army initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh to establish a constitutional order, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/armenia-azerbaijan-found-common-ground-on-basic-principles-of-peace-settlement-claims-premier-pashinyan/3057843

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijan may be preparing for military aggression against his country as the term "Western Azerbaijan," has become increasingly popular in public discourse in Azerbaijan.

During a Nov. 18 speech at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Yerevan, Pashinyan claimed Azerbaijan media, schools, and universities had started calling Armenia this way, warning the rhetoric could signal Baku's desire to start an offensive military operation.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned a select group of lawmakers that Azerbaijan might be planning to invade Armenia in the coming weeks, Politico reported on Oct. 13.

Officials familiar with the discussion told Politico that Blinken spoke about the possibility of an invasion in a conference call on Oct. 3.

The call addressed officials' questions about the U.S. response to Azerbaijan's September offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.

During the call, Blinken reportedly told lawmakers that the State Department will not renew an established agreement that permits the U.S. to offer Azerbaijan military aid. The agreement has been renewed every year since 2002 but lapsed in June.

In the same conversation, Blinken warned that Azerbaijan may invade southern Armenia.

Of particular concern is the southern region of Syunik, which Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly referred to as "Western Azerbaijan."

In mid-September, the Azerbaijani military launched a lightning offensive against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, an unrecognized Armenian state within the territory of Azerbaijan. Local authorities eventually surrendered in a ceasefire mediated by Russia.

A formal decree was later signed, dissolving all official institutions of the breakaway state from Jan. 1, 2024. Following Azerbaijan's victory, around 100,000 people have left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia.

At the beginning of November, Germany insisted that European mediation was the best option for Armenia and Azerbaijan to reach a lasting peace agreement.

The Caucasus neighbours have been locked in a decades-long conflict for control of Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku reclaimed in a lightning offensive in September.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have held several rounds of peace talks under EU mediation and both leaders have said a peace treaty could be signed in the coming months.

However, last month, Aliyev refused to attend a round of peace talks with Pashinyan in the Spanish city of Granada, over what he said was France's "biased position".

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join European Council President Charles Michel as mediators at those talks.

So far, there has been no visible progress in EU efforts to organise a fresh round of negotiations.

From a brutal war in 1988 to the 2020 conflict in which over 6,000 people were killed in 6 weeks of fighting what lies behind the animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave?

For Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center think-tank based in the Armenian capital Yerevan, the hostile reationship between Yerevan and Baku is very much a construct of Soviet-era political machinations.

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"Nagorno-Karabakh has historically been an Armenian populated region that has been very much used as a pawn by Moscow. It was used by the Soviet Union to actually divide and rule in terms of keeping-up a contentious potential conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan," he explains.

After seven decades of Soviet rule, there was an eruption of violence even before the implosion of the USSR.

"The outbreak of violence was largely due to the onset of Gorbachev's reforms – Glasnost, Perestroika, the new degree of openness and examining taboos.

"What we saw was the eruption of nationalism that occurred between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," says Giragosian.

The conflict was also unique at the time, as it was the first to erupt within the borders of the Soviet Union.

"During the Gorbachev period," he explains, "it was especially significant because the conflict tended to distort the development of independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, in terms of conflict economics and the fact that [they] were already locked in war upon gaining independence."

Fast-forward to November 2020, and the two countries agreed to end a spike in hostilities that killed thousands over a six week period, signing a Russian-brokered peace agreement where Armenia – the loser – agreed to give up control of over 20 percent of territory captured by Azerbaijan.

Two thousand Russian peacekeepers were then deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh, but the most recent Azeri offensive against Armenian separatists in the enclave revealed the failure of Russia's mission to the region. 

"The war of 2020 was especially significant for several reasons," Giragosian explains. "First, it marked the emergence of a genuine military capacity by Azerbaijan to not only defend itself but to retake lost territory. It was also significant because it marked an end to years of Armenian arrogance and complacency."

Giragosian blames both sides for too many missed opportunities for compromise.

"Armenia, in many ways, was overly self-confident. But the most important casualty from 2020 was not the loss of territory, nor the loss of life, it was the demise of deterrence," he states.

"This ushered in a new period of insecurity on the ground, but for the Russian position, the Russians drafted and imposed their own ceasefire on both countries, and then failed to be able to uphold the terms. This is why Azerbaijan imposed a nine month blockade [on the enclave] and effectively seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh."

But for the think-tank director, it's the humiliation and weakness of the Russian peacekeepers that's most interesting – "Azerbaijan has become very good at challenging and defying the Kremlin," he tells Paris Perspective. 

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Recent images coming out of Nagorno-Karabakh drew many comparisons with the 1915 Armenian genocide, bringing to the fore the question of national identity as residents of the enclave are defacto Azerbaijani citizens.

Baku maintains that the people of “Artsakh” or the Armenian population of Karabakh have the same rights as Azeris, but what is the reality on the ground?

"First of all, even prior to the most recent escalation, there was little faith and no confidence in Azerbaijani promises, largely because of the historical record.

"During the Gorbachev period through to the 90s, there were a number of anti-Armenian massacres and egregious human rights violations. The situation has only gotten worse in recent years," Giragosian underlines. 

What was remarkable about the September 2023 conflict was the speed and success of the Azerbaijani military offensive and how easy it was for them to drive out the Armenian population. 

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So, was Azerbaijan's military objective to purge the enclave of all Armenians? 

"Yes," says Giragosian, "but what was interesting is their real objective was to have a protracted period [of conflict] for domestic political dividends within Azerbaijan."

Baku essentially expected a longer, protracted campaign "to maintain power that has a lack of legitimacy".

One could almost say that, politically, they were the victim of their own success, but "with dangerously high expectations," Giragosian adds. 

But what he finds interesting about the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh – where the Armenian population was forced to leave with little more than they could pack into their cars – is that the refugees aren't looking to rebuild their lives in their ethnic homeland.

"Coming to Armenia, the core population of the last remnants of 100,000 Armenians are not necessarily keen to stay in Armenia. Many are now looking to go to Russia or European countries, because many of the Armenians from Karabakh have never lived in Armenia," Giragosian points out.

"I moved to Armenia over 15 years ago, and I'm as alien or foreign to the local Armenian experience as they are. And that's something we failed to understand," he underlines.

There is a massive Armenian diaspora in France, and Paris recently marked the 20^th anniversary of its recognition of the genocide committed by the “Young Turk” administration in 1915. But in light of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, has France done enough to support Armenia and counter its isolation in the region?

Giragosian believes Paris has stepped up to the mark. 

"To be fair, French engagement has actually exceeded expectations. But at the same time, it's the EU's engagement that's both more significant and more effective than simple French actions."

He outlines that while President Macron's commitment to Armenia is important, a wider European context is necessary for sustaining the resilience of Armenia.

"The French will be announcing a package of military assistance to Armenia in the coming weeks, designed to provide a defensive capacity for Armenia. But it's the EU's engagement [that is important] because they're not trying to mediate the conflict, they are simply trying to facilitate a negotiated peace treaty.

"My worry is the day after and what is in store to ensure a lasting durable peace. That remains an open question and one in which France – within the EU – can actually work toward," Giragosian says.

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So when the peace talks really do get in motion, what will work in Armenia's favour and what kind of end game will create a lasting peace?

"Let me be provocative," Giragosian quips. "I think the real challenge now is less the peace treaty, and more Russia, for Armenia.

"If we look at the peace treaty – the specific elements – Nagorno-Karabakh is no longer an issue," he says.

Border demarcation, the restoration of trade and transport, the opening of road and railway links are all significant aspects of a bilateral peace agreement – which are positive in terms of moving beyond conflict – but the real challenge is Russia.

"In terms of Armenia now seeking greater room to manoeuvre, we're not seeking to replace Russia [as an ally], but we're seeking to offset Russia. For Armenia, Russia has emerged as a more serious challenge as an unreliable, so-called partner," Giragosian concludes.

Watch the full video here.

Written, produced and presented by David Coffey.

Recorded by Cécile Pompeani and Nicolas Doreau 

Edited by Erwan Rome