Tuesday, 

Karabakh Peace Plan `Not Discussed' In Recent Armenian-Azeri Talks


 . Sargis Harutyunyan


Russi - Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov (C) of Russia, Edward
Nalbandian (L) of Armenia and Elmar Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan meet in
Moscow, 28Apr2017.

Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian insisted on Tuesday that he and his
Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov did not discuss in detail
international mediators' existing peace proposals on resolving the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when they last met in April.

The meeting was hosted in Moscow by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov. The three top diplomats were joined by the U.S., Russian and
French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group after conferring in a
trilateral format.

"The foreign ministers did not hold negotiations on any document in
Moscow," Nalbandian said, denying Mammadyarov's effective claims to
the contrary made on Monday. "If there was any text discussed there,
it was the text of a [joint] press release that was agreed by the
ministers in the presence of the co-chairs."

"It was then published by Russia's and Armenia's foreign ministries,
while the Azerbaijani foreign ministry published its own version," he
told a joint news conference with Estonia's visiting Foreign Minister
Sven Mikser.


Armenia -- Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian (R) and his
Estonian counterpart Sven Mikser at a joint press conference in
Yerevan, .

The April 28 statement cited by Nalbandian said that the participants
of the Moscow talks "stressed the need to fulfill" confidence-building
agreements that were reached by Armenia's and Azerbaijan's presidents
last year. The agreements call for specific measures to shore up the
shaky ceasefire regime in the conflict zone.

The Azerbaijani government is reluctant to put those truce safeguards
into practice, saying that they could cement the status quo. The
Armenian side maintains that progress in substantive peace talks is
contingent on introduction of mechanisms for preventing serious
ceasefire violations.

Nalbandian told the Minsk Group co-chairs that they should take
"concrete actions" to force Azerbaijan to de-escalate the conflict
when he met with them in Yerevan on Saturday. He claimed on Tuesday
that the mediating powers are finally realizing the need for
"appropriate steps" against Baku.



Aliyev Hails Muslim Support On Karabakh


Turkey -- Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attends the 13th
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit at Istanbul Congress
Center (ICC) in Istanbul, April 14, 2016

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has thanked Islamic states for
supporting Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and accused the
Armenians of committing "crimes against the entire Muslim world."

"The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has adopted many
documents and resolutions on the conflict," Aliyev was reported on
Tuesday to tell the Baku-based ambassadors of Muslim nations. "Those
documents support the just position of Azerbaijan."

"The support and solidarity shown by Muslim countries is very
important to us. I thank members of the organization for that
support," he said.

Aliyev singled out a joint declaration adopted by the heads of OIC
member states at a summit held in Istanbul in April last year. It
branded Armenia an "aggressor" and called for more "coercive" measures
that would help Azerbaijan restore control over Karabakh. The
statement also blamed Yerevan for four-day hostilities in Karabakh
that broke out earlier in April 2016.

The Armenian government responded by accusing the Islamic bloc of
"completely distorting the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
Armenia maintains cordial relations with some OIC member states,
notably Iran.


Nagorno-Karabakh - Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque in Shushi, July 2011.

Meeting with the foreign envoys, Aliyev also alleged that the
Armenians have destroyed Azerbaijani mosques in the Karabakh town of
Shushi (Shusha), Aghdam and other "occupied towns.""This is a crime
against the entire Muslim world," he charged, according to the APA
news agency. "We want all Muslims of the world to know this."

While the Shia mosques in Shushi and Aghdam are in need of repairs,
they were not destroyed after those towns were captured by Karabakh
Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan. The Karabakh
leadership claimed in 2010 to have spent over $80,000 on refurbishing
them as well as a former Islamic school building in Shushi. It said
the cosmetic repairs there were also sponsored by the Karabakh diocese
of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The authorities in Stepanakert announced in December last year that
they have contracted an unnamed Iranian company to complete the
reconstruction of Shushi's 19th century Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque.



Farmers Demand Government Aid After Hailstorm


 . Anush Muradian


Armenia - A farmer in Armavir province shows his fields hit by a
powerful hailstorm, 13Jun2017.

Hundreds of angry farmers blocked a road in Armenia on Tuesday to
demand that the government compensate them for massive damage caused
by a powerful hailstorm that swept through the country the previous
night.

The protesters were mainly residents of eight villages in the Armavir
province west of Yerevan which reportedly bore the brunt of the
storm. According to the Armenian Agriculture Ministry, hailstones
destroyed between 40 and 100 percent of crops grown in those
communities.

Local residents thus fully or partly lost their main source income for
this year. Many of them have outstanding debts to commercial
banks. They planned to repay their agricultural loans with proceeds
from sales of their fruits and vegetables.

"The hail destroyed the whole harvest here," said one of the villagers
blocking an Armavir highway. "Whatever money was invested here is
lost."

"We need to have some kind of assistance from the state so that we can
feel better and don't leave this country," said another man.

The protesters unblocked the road after Deputy Agriculture Minister
Ashot Harutiunian and Armavir's governor, Ashot Ghahramanian, visited
and spoke to them. The officials, who also toured the affected
communities, promised to submit compensation proposals to the
government within the next ten days. The farmers were skeptical about
those assurances.

"They say that [repayment of] our loans will be postponed until next
year," one of them told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "But
we haven't seen such things until now."

"Last year there was an even stronger hailstorm," said another
villager. "Not a single leaf was left on these trees. Our governor
fooled us, saying that they will compensate and help us in every other
way. But they did nothing."

The protesting farmers also complained about the absence of hail
cannons in most of their communities.

An Agriculture Ministry statement quoted Harutiunian as saying that
hail cannons deployed in other parts of Armavir as well as the
neighboring Aragatsotn province "worked intensively" during Monday's
hailstorm. "Otherwise, the damage would have been much greater," the
vice-minister said.

Every year a considerable part of farming production in Armenia is
lost due to hail. The Armenian government has sought to limit the
damage by financing or subsidizing the installation of hundreds of
hail cannons across the country. Many villages still lack such
facilities.

Also, the effectiveness of the cannons is questioned by some
agriculture experts. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Karen
Karapetian discussed with relevant government officials alternative
ways of protecting harvests, including anti-hail nets.



Armenia `Reliable Partner' For NATO


 . Tatevik Lazarian


Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (R) meets with NATO envoy James
Appathurai in Yerevan, 13Jun2017.

Armenia is a "reliable partner" of NATO and its close ties with Russia
have caused no problems for the Western alliance, according to a
senior NATO envoy.

The official, James Appathurai, described as "excellent" the South
Caucasus nation's increased cooperation with NATO at the start of his
latest visit to Yerevan on Monday.

"We fully respect the balanced foreign policy that Armenia has,"
Appathurai told a news conference. "It causes us no complication that
Armenia is, for example, in the [Russian-led] Collective Security
Treaty Organization or the Eurasian Economic Union."

"Armenia has been a reliable partner for NATO," added NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg's special representative for the South
Caucasus and Central Asia.

Appathurai met with President Serzh Sarkisian on Tuesday for talks
that focused on NATO-Armenia ties, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
broader regional security. Armenia's relationship with neighboring
Iran was also on the agenda, according to a statement released by the
presidential press office.


Armenia -- NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the
Caucasus and Central Asia James Appathurai at a news conference in
Yerevan, .

The statement said Sarkisian "recalled with fondness" his most recent
meeting with Stoltenberg held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels in
late February. Speaking after those talks, Stoltenberg praised NATO's
"partnership" with Armenia and spoke of "opportunities for us to
cooperate more closely on interoperability, defense reform and defense
education."

Despite its close military alliance with Russia, Armenia has forged
closer links with NATO -- and the United States in particular -- since
the early 2000s. It currently contributes around 130 troops to
NATO-led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and regularly participates
in multinational exercises organized by U.S. forces in Europe.

In 2015, Yerevan expressed readiness to participate in more such
missions abroad with specialized medical and demining
units. U.S. military instructors began training Armenian military
personnel for that purpose last year.

Appathurai cautioned that while the two sides will carry on with their
"steady cooperation" he does not expect "dramatic leaps forward" in
their relations.



Press Review



"Zhoghovurd" comments on Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian's calls
for the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to "rein in" Azerbaijan not
only with statements but also "concrete actions." The paper says an
Armenian Foreign Ministry statement on Nalbandian's weekend meeting
with the co-chairs did not specify what those actions should be. "We
wonder how he sees the realization of his appeal," it says. "At least,
there is no legal document giving the co-chairs the right to impose
sanctions on official Baku or Yerevan. The OSCE Minsk Group is not the
UN Security Council and its co-chairs are only mediators. So such
statements by Nalbandian may not be taken seriously by the
international community or the co-chairs."

"Hayots Ashkhar" suggests that "serious international pressure" on
Baku is now essential for preventing another sharp escalation of the
Karabakh conflict. It is only natural, the paper says, that Yerevan
now expects "tough and explicit warnings" from the U.S., Russian and
French mediators ahead of their visit to Baku. It says that renewed
peace talks in the absence of mechanisms for preventing ceasefire
violations in the conflict zone would only tempt the Azerbaijani
leadership to provoke the kind of hostilities that broke out in April
2016.

William Lahue, the head of NATO's regional Liaison Office in Tbilisi,
tells "Aravot" that Armenia's relations with Iran "do not matter at
all" to the Western alliance. "You have a cooperation framework, you
are a sovereign state, and you decide the circle of you relationships
with other countries and allies," he says. "If there is a decision to
impose an embargo on Iran, it will also be a decision by sovereign
states. And let me say this: states usually avoid embargoes and want
to have them lifted. But it's not NATO's businesses. It's up to member
states and allies."

"Haykakan Zhamanak" comments on what it sees as a suspicious increase
in food prices in Armenia that has been reported by the National
Statistical Service (NSS) for a second consecutive month. The NSS said
on Monday that they were up in May by more than 6 percent from the
same period in 2016. The paper says that it is not yet clear which
foodstuffs became more expensive in the past year. It claims that the
NSS is "hiding" more detailed information about consumer prices in the
country.

(Tigran Avetisian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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