Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russia
Jan 15 2009

Moscow and Yerevan Parry Blow From Baku

by Yuriy Simonyan

On Wednesday [14 January] the Russian Defence Ministry officially
refuted a report disseminated by the Azerbaijani media on the handover
of armaments worth 800m dollars to Armenia. This happened almost a
week before the deadline announced by the Russian Federation Defence
Ministry for clarifying the circumstances. "The reports do not
correspond to reality. The text of the official announcement will be
issued in the next few hours," Nezavisimaya Gazeta was told at the
press centre of Russia’s defence department.

Let me remind you that the story of the virtually free handover to
Yerevan of armaments from the 102d Russian military base located in
the Armenian city of Gyumri was published in the first days of the New
Year by a number of the Azerbaijani mass media. Ambassador of the
Russian Federation Vasiliy Istratov was summoned to the Azerbaijani
Foreign Ministry to give an explanation.

The Russian Foreign Ministry promised Baku that it would look into the
situation, and the Russian Federation Defence Ministry, after
immediately refuting the Azerbaijani journalists’ report, nonetheless
took a timeout until 20 January "in order to prepare an official
response."

There was no shortage of Azerbaijani theories about the "New Year gift
to Armenia": from the commonplace – nowadays – accusation that Russia
is planning to stage another war in the Caucasus, to the outrageous
suggestion that the Armenian authorities might need weapons worth
nearly $1 million to deal with opposition elements in their own
society.

Colonel Seyran Shakhsuvaryan, press secretary at the Armenian Defence
Ministry, was inundated with telephone calls. "We have received
nothing from the Russians… Go to the Russian Defence Ministry, after
all, and ask them why it took a whole week to prepare a statement," he
said to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, making no secret of his irritation.

Stepan Grigoryan, head of the Globalization Analysis Centre, expressed
surprise at events. According to him, taking into account the fact
that Russia and Armenia are members of the CSTO [Collective Security
Treaty Organization] and a number of other factors, military
cooperation will continue and deepen, and "the most important thing is
that commitments under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in
Europe (CFE Treaty) should not be violated in this context."

The Republic itself has in recent days been full of rumours that the
Russian base at Gyumri will be substantially extended through the
redeployment of subunits to other regions of Armenia and that the
question of opening another military base has also been raised:
Representatives of the Russian Federation Defence Ministry have
visited various parts of the country on familiarization trips and
their choice has supposedly come down in favour of the irregularly
functioning civil airfield in the small town of Stepanavan in the
north of Armenia. Both countries’ defence departments declined to
comment on the existence of these plans.

"Such issues are not decided quite so simply. If the Russian military
liked the Stepanavan airfield, that in itself tells us nothing.
Familiarization trips by the Russian military around the country have
happened and will continue to happen – this is normal practice among
strategic partners, as is the discussion of long-term plans," former
Armenian Defence Minister Bagarshak Arutyunyan told Nezavisimaya
Gazeta. According to him, talk to the effect that the 102d Military
Base is spreading all over the Republic has no foundation: It is
deployed where it is supposed to be under the treaty concluded while
Arutyunyan was minister, and the same, incidentally, is true of its
aviation component – at Yerevan’s Erebuni airport, "which is in joint
use."

"Under the CFE Treaty both Russia and Armenia must give notification
of what they have, where, and in what quantity. They are obliged to
inform OSCE headquarters in Vienna of any changes to the quantity of
particular units or redeployments," Arutyunyan told Nezavisimaya
Gazeta. For this reason the ex-minister believes that the $800 million
deal publicized by the media is not in accordance with reality: At any
time any of the parties to the CFE Treaty may express the desire to
verify compliance with the treaty. "Thus far not a single inspection
of Armenia has uncovered any violations," the ex-defence minister
believes. According to him, Azerbaijan is violating the treaty by
actively buying weapons from the Czech Republic and particularly from
Ukraine – this is first and foremost a question of armoured equipment
and Smerch long-range multiple-launch rocket systems. "We all saw the
results of Ukraine’s arming Georgia, and we certainly would not want
history to repeat itself. And the fact that Baku has rearmed is known
to the United Nations, to which weapons-exporting countries annually
send information on the deals made," Arutyunyan told Nezavisimaya
Gazeta.

[translated from Russian]