Wednesday, Yerevan Reaffirms Plans To Scrap Turkish-Armenian Accords Greece - Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias (R) and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian at a news conference in Athens, 13Dec2017. Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian reaffirmed on Wednesday the Armenian government's intention to formally annul U.S.-brokered agreements to normalize Armenia's relations with Turkey, citing Ankara's "groundless preconditions" for their implementation. The two protocols signed in Zurich in October 2009 committed Turkey and Armenia to establishing diplomatic relations and opening their border. Shortly after the high-profile signing ceremony, Ankara made clear, however, that Turkey's parliament will ratify the deal only if there is decisive progress towards a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan. The Armenian government rejected this precondition, arguing that the protocols make no reference to the conflict. The United States, the European Union and Russia have also repeatedly called for their unconditional implementation by both sides. President Serzh Sarkisian again denounced Turkey's stance when he addressed the UN General Assembly in September. "Given the absence of any progress towards their implementation, Armenia will declare the two protocols null and void," he said. "We will enter the spring of 2018 without those, as our experience has demonstrated, futile protocols." Switzerland -- Armenia's Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian (L) and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu sign documents during the signing ceremony of Turkey and Armenia peace deal in Zurich, 10Oct2009 Nalbandian echoed that statement during a visit to Greece. "Those documents have still not been ratified since Turkey came up with groundless preconditions that run counter to the letter and spirit of the protocols," he said. "Those documents cannot be held hostage forever, and that is why the president of Armenia declared in September # that Armenia will declare the protocols null and void," Nalbandian said in a speech delivered at the Greek Foreign Ministry. Ankara has still not officially reacted to Sarkisian's September statement. Successive Turkish governments have kept that border with Armenia completely closed since 1993 in a show of support for Azerbaijan. Sarkisian already threatened in February 2010 to scrap the protocols if they are not ratified by the Turks "in the shortest possible time." But he avoided doing that, saying two months later that he does not want to upset the U.S. and other world powers that strongly backed the landmark deal. Speaking after talks with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, Nalbandian also described Greek-Armenian relations as a "true brotherhood." "We both suffered from genocides and crimes against humanity, defended shoulder-to-shoulder our right to life and stood by each other in difficult times," he said. Greece - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (R) and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian meet in Athens, 15Mar2016. Meeting with Sarkisian in Athens last year, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras likewise said that Armenians and Greeks were victims of genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during World War One. For his part, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos told his Armenian counterpart that "at the beginning of the 20th century the two peoples endured tragic moments for the same reason." Turkey condemned those statements. "Solidarity between Greece and Armenia is built upon a joint hostility and slander language directed against the Turkish identity," a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said in March 2016. Greece's strained relations with Turkey, a fellow NATO member, again came to the fore during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's official visit to Athens last week. Armenian Military To Continue Afghanistan, Kosovo Missions # Sargis Harutyunyan Afghanistan -- Armenia's Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian inspects Armenian troops near Kunduz, 24Jul2010. Armenia will continue to contribute troops to the NATO-led missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo and step up its broader cooperation with NATO, senior officials in Yerevan said on Wednesday. According to Levon Ayvazaian, head of a defense policy department at the Armenian Defense Ministry, 121 Armenian soldiers are currently deployed in Afghanistan and 35 others in Kosovo. "Our participation has continued on the same scale this year and we have made a political decision to also continue it in the coming years," said Ayvazian. The soldiers serving there are part of the Armenian army's special peacekeeping brigade that has received considerable assistance from the United States and other NATO member states. In particular, the U.S. has helped to renovate the brigade's training center near Yerevan. Senior Armenian and U.S. military officials inaugurated the facility on October 31. Kosovo - Armenian soldiers walk in riot gear to a UH-60 Black Hawk during a training exercise on Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, March 12, 2014. (Photo courtesy of www.army.mil) The Armenian deployments in Kosovo and Afghanistan have highlighted Armenia's growing ties with NATO stemming from an Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) originally launched in 2006 and repeatedly updated since then. Armen Yedigarian, a senior Armenian Foreign Ministry official, said the most recent, fifth version of the IPAP was approved by NATO in April. The document lists joint activities planned for 2017-2019, he told reporters. Yedigarian and Ayvazian met the press at the official launch of an annual "NATO Week" in Armenia. Rosaria Puglisi, deputy head of a NATO liaison office in the South Caucasus, also spoke at the event. She announced that NATO's Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller will arrive in Yerevan on Monday for talks with President Serzh Sarkisian and other Armenian leaders. Armenia - Soldiers of the Armenian Peacekeeping Brigade lined up for an exercise monitored by NATO, September 2015. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Armenia.) In Ayvazian's words, "military-technical cooperation" is also on the agenda of Armenia's dealings with NATO and its individual member states. "It is not confined to buying weapons and ammunition," he said. "It also has many other components such as cooperation on technology, joint solutions, ventures and so on." The defense official cited the example of a Polish-Armenian joint venture that was set up in 2013 to manufacture protective gear such as army helmets, flak jackets and inflatable tents and decoys for the Armenian military. "We also have a fairly long experience of setting up and operating joint ventures with Greece," added Ayvazian. "We are holding negotiations in this direction with various states and I think that we will have better, more visible results over time." Opposition Slams More Borrowing Planned By Government # Tatevik Lazarian Armenia - Naira Zohrabian of the Tsarukian Bloc speaks during a parliament session in Yerevan, 13Dec2017. Opposition lawmakers faulted the government for Armenia's increased public debt on Wednesday as the National Assembly lifted a legal limit on further government borrowing. An Armenian law has stipulated until now that the total amount of debt incurred by the government cannot exceed a sum equivalent to 60 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Government-drafted amendments will scrap this borrowing cap. At the same time, they will require the government to come up with a plan to ease the debt burden. The parliament passed the amendments in the first reading by 61 votes to 37. Voting against them were deputies from the opposition Yelk alliance and businessman Gagik Tsarukian's bloc, the second largest parliamentary force. "The sole aim of this bill is to attract more foreign loans. This is unacceptable," Naira Zohrabian, a senior lawmaker from the Tsarukian bloc, said just before the vote. Zohrabian said Finance Minister Vartan Aramian failed to present convincing arguments when the parliament debated the bill on Tuesday. Aramian claimed during the debate that the bill is not primarily aimed at allowing the government to obtain more multimillion-dollar loans. He insisted that the government is committed to cutting the GDP-to-debt ratio from 55.4 percent to 54.4 percent by the end of next year. Aramian also dismissed claims by another Tsarukian Bloc deputy, Mikael Melkumian, that the government has wasted or misused many loans extended by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other multilateral lenders. "Armenia is considered by them a best performer country," said the minister. Armenia's public debt, which also includes foreign loans extended to its Central Bank, currently stands at $6.4 billion. It was below $2 billion before the 2008-2009 global financial crisis that plunged the county into a severe recession. Later in the day, the parliament allowed the government to take a $40 million loan from the Asian Development Bank. The money is to be used for financing the state budget deficit. Armenia No Friend To Muslim States, Says Aliyev # Lusine Musayelian Turkey - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (R) and other Muslim heads of state pose for a photograph at a summit in Istanbul, 13Dec2017. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev urged Muslim countries to avoid close relations with Armenia as he attended on Wednesday an emergency summit of their leaders held in response to the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Addressing the summit in Istanbul organized by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Aliyev again denounced Armenian "occupation" of Nagorno-Karabakh and what he called the destruction of Islamic monuments in "the historic land of Azerbaijan." He described as "hypocritical" Armenia's desire to forge friendly ties with Islamic states. "Muslims of the world must be aware that an Armenia tearing down mosques cannot be a friend of Muslim countries," he said, according to Azerbaijani news agencies. Aliyev did not specify which Azerbaijani mosques were destroyed during or after the 1991-1994 war in Karabakh. The region's largest Shia mosques are located in the war-ravaged towns of Shushi (Shusha) and Aghdam. While they are in need of repairs, they were not torn down after those towns were captured by Karabakh Armenian forces. At least one of them has undergone cosmetic repairs. The Karabakh leadership announced late last year it has contracted an unnamed Iranian company to complete the reconstruction of Shushi's 19th century Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque. Nagorno-Karabakh - Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque in Shushi, July 2011. In his speech, Aliyev also thanked countries making up the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for supporting Azerbaijan's position on the Karabakh conflict. Three of them -- Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- refuse to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia out of solidarity with Azerbaijan. A joint declaration adopted by the heads of OIC member states at a 2016 summit branded Armenia an "aggressor" and called for more "coercive" measures that would help Azerbaijan regain control over Karabakh. The Armenian government responded by accusing the Muslim bloc of "completely distorting the essence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict." Predominantly Christian Armenia maintains cordial relations with some OIC member states, notably neighboring Iran. The latter has had an uneasy rapport with Azerbaijan. Press Review "Zhoghovurd" claims that the Armenian government wants to scrap a legal limit on the relative size of its debt because it needs new large-scale loans in order to save Armenia's economic from "collapse." The paper fears that increasing the country's public debt burden further will be fraught with grave economic risks. "The state propaganda machine is already busy boosting the approval ratings of the future prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian," writes "Hraparak." The paper points to what it calls a fraudulent opinion poll that have been conducted by a government-linked group recently. The poll found that Sarkisian's approval ratings have risen while Prime Minister Karapetian's have fallen in the past year. "They are naturally delighted with these results in the Republican Party (HHK)," comments the paper. "Especially the party's youth wing whose leaders worship Serzh Sarkisian and can't imagine their life without his existence." "Hraparak" also quotes a parliament deputy from the HHK, Mihran Hakobian, as denying any "rivalry" between Armenia's president and prime minister. He says that no HHK figure would "compete" with Sarkisian because the latter is the party's "undisputed leader elected and accepted by everyone." "I don't think that anyone in the HHK is now trying to or has chances to compete with the head of state," he tells the paper. "Zhamanak" reacts to Prime Minister Karapetian's visit to the Defense Ministry in Yerevan this week during which he chaired a meeting of a government commission on armaments and familiarized himself with new weapons developed by the Armenian defense industry. The paper says that Karapetian went to the sprawling ministry headquarters in Yerevan shortly after those weapons were demonstrated late last month during military exercises held in Karabakh and watched by President Sarkisian. It wonders whether the premier tried to "keep up" with the president or Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian and underline his ambition to retain his post in April. "For years and decades, our entire public discourse was based on national romanticism," writes "Aravot." "Starting from the kindergarten, the premise [of children's upbringing] was a narrative about miserable, long-suffering but also proud and revengeful Armenians.That narrative played a major role in the 1960s and 1970s but is absolutely useless now that we have a more or less decent state with an army and all other attributes." The paper goes on to make a case for "modernizing education" in Armenia and, in particular, getting rid of its "national-liberation" overtones. "The generation, or at least a part of it, has avoided that outdated upbringing," it says. (Elen Chilingarian) 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