ARMENIAN OFFICIALS, ANALYSTS DISMISS REPORTS OF WEAPONS TRANSFER FROM RUSSIA

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Jan 15 2009
Russia

The Russian Defence Ministry on Wednesday [ 14 January] officially
denied reports in the Azerbaijani media regarding the transfer of $800
million worth of arms to Armenia. This comes almost one week earlier
than the fact-finding deadline previously announced by the Russian
Defence Ministry. "The reports are not true. The text of an official
statement will be circulated in the coming hours," Nezavisimaya Gazeta
was told by the Russian Defence Ministry’s press office.

Let us recall that this story of an all but complimentary transfer of
arms from Russia’s 102nd military base, located in the Armenian city of
Gyumri, to Yerevan was published shortly after the New Year by a number
of Azerbaijani media outlets. Russian Ambassador Vasiliy Istratov was
summoned to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to provide clarifications.

The Russian Foreign Ministry promised Baku to look into the situation,
while the Russian Defence Ministry, after initially denying the
Azerbaijani journalists’ reports out of hand, nevertheless took a
pause until 20 January "to prepare an official response."

Nothing was lacking in Azerbaijan’s accounts of this "New Year’s
present to Armenia": from the already hackneyed accusation that Russia
is planning to start another war in the Caucasus to the extravagant
proposition that the Armenian authorities may have needed almost $1
million worth of arms in order to carry out reprisals against the
opposition-minded segment of their own society.

Colonel Seyran Shakhsuvaryan, press secretary for the Armenian Defence
Ministry, has been pestered with phone calls. "We have not received
anything from the Russians… You should contact the Russian Defence
Ministry and find out why they needed a whole week to prepare a
statement," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta, scarcely concealing his
irritation. Stepan Grigoryan, head of the Analytical Centre for
Globalization, expressed surprise at what has happened. According to
him, considering that Russia and Armenia are both members of the CSTO
[Collective Security Treaty Organization], along with a number of other
factors, military cooperation is going to continue and deepen, and
"the most important thing is for them not to breach their obligations
under the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE)."

The republic [Armenia] itself has been rife with rumours in recent
days that the Russian base in Gyumri is going to undergo significant
expansion through the redeployment of units to other regions of
Armenia, and that the possibility has been raised of opening another
military base: representatives of the Russian Defence Ministry have
made familiarization trips to various parts of the country and have
allegedly settled on an airport in the city of Stepanavan, northern
Armenia, that is not in regular use. Both countries’ defence ministries
refused to comment on whether any such plans exist.

"Such matters are not so easily resolved. Even if the Russian officers
did like the Stepanavan airport, that does not mean anything. Russian
officers have made familiarization trips around the country in the
past and will continue to do in the future – this is normal practice
between strategic partners, as is discussing promising plans," former
Armenian Defence Minister Vagarshak Harutyunyan told Nezavisimaya
Gazeta. According to him, talk of the 102nd military base sprawling out
throughout the republic is unfounded: the base is located where it is
supposed to be pursuant to a treaty concluded back when Harutyunyan
was still minister, just as its aviation component, incidentally,
is based at Yerevan’s Erenuni Airport, "which is in joint use".

"Under the CFE, both Russia and Armenia have to declare what they have,
where it is, and how much they have. They are required to inform the
OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] headquarters
in Vienna about any redeployments or changes in the quantity of any
units," Harutyunyan told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. It is precisely for
this reason, the ex-minister believes, that the story circulated by
the media regarding the $800 million deal is untrue: any signatory to
the CFE Treaty may at any time declare a wish to inspect compliance
with the treaty. "So far not a single check of Armenia has revealed
any violations," the ex-defence minister says. According to him,
it is Azerbaijan that has violated the treaty by actively purchasing
weapons in the Czech Republic and, especially, Ukraine -this refers
primarily to armoured vehicles and Smerch multiple long-distance rocket
launchers. "We all saw what Ukraine’s arming of Georgia led to, and
one certainly would not want to see history repeated. As for the fact
that Baku has rearmed, this is well-known at the UN, which receives
information each year from the arms-exporting countries regarding their
completed transactions," Harutyunyan informed Nezavisimaya Gazeta.