Tuesday, Russia's Ruling Party Said To Back EU-Armenia Deal . Emil Danielyan Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (R) meets with Sergey Zheleznyak, a senior member of the ruling United Russia party, in Yerevan, 27Nov2017. A senior representative of Russia's ruling party reportedly voiced support late on Monday for Armenia's efforts to forge closer links with the European Union while maintaining its political and military alliance with Russia. Sergey Zheleznyak and three other lawmakers representing President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party met with President Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan three days after Armenia signed the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the EU. Sarkisian's press office quoted Zheleznyak, who is the deputy secretary of United Russia's governing board, as praising "wise and balanced" policies pursued by the Armenian government. "He stressed that Russia's ruling party stands for the principle of `both/and,' rather than `either/or,' of developing relations and cooperation," the office said in a statement. "Armenia builds its relations with the Russian Federation and the EU in that context. Therefore, according to Sergey Zheleznyak, all those views that differ from the above-mentioned position do not reflect the official approaches of Russia and its ruling party." Moscow's stance on the issue was a subject of intense media speculation in Armenia throughout two-year negotiations that preceded the signing of the CEPA in Brussels on Friday. Some pro-Western pundits in Yerevan claimed that the Kremlin could force Yerevan to pull out of the deal. Armenian officials ruled out such a possibility. Russian pressure was widely attributed to President Sarkisian's unexpected decision in 2013 to seek Armenia's accession to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The move precluded the signing of a more far-reaching Association Agreement between Armenia and the EU. RUSSIA -- Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan in Moscow on November 15, 2017. While some pro-government Russian commentators expressed concern over the CEPA in recent weeks, Moscow gave no indications that it disapproves of the deal. "Armenia is a sovereign country and it has the right to enter into any agreements or blocs that do not contradict obligations assumed by it earlier," the Russian ambassador in Yerevan, Ivan Volynkin, told the Arminfo news agency on Thursday. The CEPA provisions, he said, do not run counter to Armenia's EEU membership commitments. Volynkin expressed hope that Armenia will become a "bridge of cooperation between the EU and the EEU." The Russian envoy stressed at the same time that the EU is "unable to replace Russia in providing security guarantees to Armenia." "The EU itself is dependent on NATO in that sense," he said. Armenian leaders have repeatedly stated that the alliance with Russia remains the cornerstone of Armenian foreign and security policy. Sarkisian visited Moscow and met with Putin nine days before attending the CEPA signing ceremony in Brussels. Babayan Sentenced To Six Years In Prison . Karlen Aslanian Armenia - Samvel Babayan (R), Nagorno-Karabakh's former military leader, stands trial in Yerevan, 20Nov2017. Samvel Babayan, Nagorno-Karabakh's former top military commander general linked to an Armenian opposition group, was sentenced to six years in prison on Tuesday on charges of illegal arms acquisition and money laundering which he strongly denies. A court in Yerevan also sentenced two other men, who went on trial with Babayan in July, to three and two years' imprisonment. The four other defendants in the high-profile trial received suspended jail terms ranging from two to two and a half years. Babayan was arrested in March this year after Armenia's National Security Service (NSS) claimed to have confiscated a surface-to-air rocket system smuggled to the country. The arrest came about two weeks before Armenia's last parliamentary elections. Babayan was unofficially affiliated with the ORO alliance led by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian and two other opposition politicians. ORO condemned the criminal case as politically motivated. Babayan likewise alleged political motives behind his prosecution in his concluding remarks at the trial made on Monday. He claimed that shortly after his arrest some officials "spoke of politics" with him and "explained why they caught me." He declined to name them, while saying that he know where the "order" to jail him came from. Armenia - Samvel Babayan stands trial in Yerevan, 28Aug2017 Also, the once powerful general again denied prosecutors' claims that he promised to pay other defendants, notably his longtime associate Sanasar Gabrielian, $50,000 for the delivery of the shoulder-fired Igla rocket. Gabrielian, who received the three-year prison sentence, stated during the trial that it was he who commissioned the confiscated Igla. He claimed that he wanted to donate the launcher along with its shoulder-fired rockets to Nagorno-Karabakh's army. Gabrielian insisted he only showed Babayan a photograph of the Igla system because the latter "knows everything" about weapons. Babayan, he said, advised him to hide the weapon in a remote Karabakh village and then anonymously tip off the Karabakh military about that. Babayan echoed this version of events on Monday. "As regards the Igla, it has nothing to do with me, there is no evidence," he said. A trial prosecutor maintained on November 13 that law-enforcement authorities have presented sufficient evidence of Babayan's guilt. The prosecution has never clarified, however, why the former Karabakh army chief sought to get hold of the Russian-made rocket designed to shoot down planes and helicopters. "They have duly executed the order," Babayan declared tartly when the presiding judge, Arshak Zakarian, read out the guilty verdict. Armenia -- A court in Yerevan examines a shoulder-fired rocket system in the trial of Samvel Babayan and six other men, Yerevan, 25Sept2017. Asked by reporters in the courtroom whether he believes the "order" was issued by President Serzh Sarkisian, Babayan replied: "You said so." He also declined to clarify whether he considers himself a political prisoner. Meanwhile, Babayan's lawyer, Avetis Kalashian, said that his client will appeal against the "extremely harsh" verdict. Babayan, 52, led Karabakh's Armenian-backed army from 1993-1999 and was widely regarded as the unrecognized republic's most powerful man at that time. He was arrested in 2000 and subsequently sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly masterminding a botched attempt on the life of the then Karabakh president, Arkady Ghukasian. Immediately after being set free in 2004, Babayan relocated to Yerevan where he set up an opposition party that fared poorly in Armenian parliamentary elections held in 2007. He emigrated to Russia in 2011 for still unclear reasons. The retired general returned to Armenia in May 2016, citing the increased risk of renewed war with Azerbaijan. He has repeatedly criticized Armenia's and Karabakh's current governments since then. Armenia Repatriates Azeri Soldier's Body Armenian - Armenian military personnel and Red Cross officials hand over to Azerbaijan the body of a dead Azerbaijani soldier, 28Nov2017. The Armenian military repatriated on Tuesday the body of an Azerbaijani soldier who was reportedly found dead on Armenia's border with Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan exclave last week. The handover facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took place at another section of the Nakhichevan frontier. The Defense Ministry in Yerevan released several photographs that showed Armenian military personnel carrying a stretcher covered with a white sheet at a fortified border post. They were accompanied by three ICRC officials, one of whom held up a Red Cross flag. According to the ministry, the Azerbaijani soldier was found on Thursday lying dead in front of an Armenian army post facing eastern Nakhichevan. A ministry statement released on Tuesday insisted that he was an army captain. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has said, however, that the dead soldier, identified as Bakhruz Jalibeyli, was a 19-year-old conscript who deserted his unit after committing an unspecified "crime." So far it has said nothing about the circumstances of his death. The ICRC similarly assisted in the handover to Baku in February of the body of another Azerbaijani soldier who was shot dead at another section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border last December. Yerevan said that his death was the result of an attempted Azerbaijani incursion into Armenia which also left three Armenian servicemen dead. Iranian FM Discusses Closer Business Ties In Armenia . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (L) meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Yerevan, 28Nov2017. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with President Serzh Sarkisian and other Armenian leaders on Tuesday during a visit to Yerevan that appeared to focus on ongoing efforts to expand Armenian-Iranian economic ties. He arrived in the Armenian capital with a large group of Iranian businessmen who held a one-day conference with fellow entrepreneurs from Armenia. Zarif and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian opened the forum before holding talks. "There are quite good opportunities for expanding economic relations between the two countries," Zarif told an ensuing joint news conference with Nalbandian. "Energy and cargo transit are very important areas of our cooperation with Armenia," he said. "We also attach importance to our cooperation on science and technology." Armenia - Foreign Ministers Edward Nalbandian and Mohammad Javad Zarif at a news conference in Yerevan, 28Nov2017 Nalbandian said, for his part, that they discussed ways of increasing bilateral commerce and preparations for next month's meeting in Yerevan of an Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. In that context, he stressed the importance of a planned free-trade deal between Iran and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union which is strongly backed by Armenia. According to official Armenian statistics, Armenian-Iranian trade stood at a relatively modest $197.4 million in the first nine months of this year. It was up by 10 percent from the same period in 2016. Zarif was reported to tell Sarkisian later in the day that the current scale of Armenian-Iranian business dealings "does not befit the high level of political relations between the two friendly nations." The two men agreed on the need to "bolster economic ties and develop mutually beneficial cooperation in various areas," reported the Armenian presidential press office. It said Zarif called Armenia a "very good neighbor" of Iran. Armenia - The Armenian and Iranian foreign ministers open an Armenian-Iranian business forum in Yerevan, 28Nov2017. Economic issues dominated Zarif's separate meeting with Prime Minister Karen Karapetian. They discussed, among other things, the upcoming launch of a free economic zone in Armenia's southeastern Meghri district bordering Iran. According to an Armenian government statement, they agreed that the tax haven for manufacturing firms could give a major boost to Armenian-Iranian business ties. The statement added that Armenian-Iranian energy projects were also on the agenda of Karapetian's talks with the chief Iranian diplomat. But it did not elaborate. Karapetian met with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh and Energy Minister Sattar Mahmoudi when he paid an official visit to Tehran in October. He reportedly discussed the possibility of a trilateral deal that would enable Armenia to import cheap natural gas from Turkmenistan via Iran. No concrete agreements to that effect have been announced so far. The Armenian premier on Tuesday described his trip to Iran as "quite promising." "Armenia's government is extremely interested in qualitatively changing and raising our trade to a higher level," he told Zarif. Press Review "Aravot" ridicules Russian commentators who have reacted angrily to the signing of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Armenia and the European Union. "These and other displays of jealousy and venomous comments addressed to us by Russia's not-at-all-independent media are especially surprising now that the Kremlin says that it has no problem with that agreement," writes the paper. "Either [Russian] propagandists have not received corresponding orders or their leadership says one thing in public but stirs up something else from behind the scenes." "Haykakan Zhamanak" says that President Serzh Sarkisian's desire to extend his rule was one of the main reasons why the CEPA was signed last week. "Before launching an assault on the government in 2018 Serzh Sarkisian is demonstrating to the European Union and the West in general that he is open to cooperation with them and that if the West attempts to impede his `reproduction' in 2018 it will have to do business with pro-Russian [Prime Minister] Karen Karapetian," explains the paper. "And if Russia attempts to impede his reproduction it will have to do so through Karen Karapetian. These latest developments have shown that Karapetian does not have sufficient clout to thwart the signing of the CEPA and is therefore unfit for the role of the protector of Moscow's interests in Armenia." Interviewed by "168 Zham," Nicu Popescu, a Paris-based political analyst, describes the CEPA as a "big achievement for Armenia and the EU given the circumstances in which Armenia had abandoned the Association Agreement" with the EU in 2013. "But it would be wrong to say that this represents some kind of association with the EU because Armenia will not have the kind of relationship with the EU which Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova have," he says. "Hraparak" claims that pro-European groups in Armenia have only now revolted against their country's membership in the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The paper considers this reaction overdue and says those groups should now focus instead on the implementation of the new EU-Armenia agreement. They should "force the authorities to take real steps in that direction so that the document does not remain on paper," it says. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org