Tuesday,
Baku Raps Armenian PM Over Stepanakert Speech
• Hrach Melkumian
A government building in Baku, Azerbaijan (file photo)
Official Baku has strongly condemned Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
statement made at an August 5 rally in Stepanakert that “Artsakh
[Nagorno-Karabakh] is Armenia.”
“Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan. It is our historic and inseparable land,” said
Hikmet Haciyev, head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Azerbaijani
President’s Administration.
The Azerbaijani official described Pashinian’s statement as provocative, saying
that by such rhetoric Armenia’s leadership is bringing the region to the brink
of a “serious crisis”.
“Let no one doubt that Azerbaijan will restore its territorial integrity.
Responsibility for the consequences lies with the Armenian side,” said Haciyev,
as quoted by Azerbaijani media.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an
Armenian-populated region that has been de-facto independent from Baku after a
three-year war in the early 1990s, in which an estimated 30,000 people were
killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced.
Despite a 1994 ceasefire, loss of life has continued in the conflict zone in
recurrent border skirmishes and sporadic fighting.
An internationally mediated peace process spearheaded by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group has so far failed to produce a
lasting settlement of the conflict.
Pashinian addressed a crowd of several thousand people at Stepanakert’s central
Renaissance Square on the eve of the ceremonial opening of the seventh
Pan-Armenian Games.
The quadrennial Games held in Yerevan bring together ethnic Armenian athletes
from around the world and are designed to foster closer relationships between
Armenia and its far-flung Diaspora. This year the Nagorno-Karabakh capital
hosts the Games opening ceremony.
In his speech, Pashinian also called for the consolidation of the “pan-Armenian
potential” in realizing the nation’s strategic goals.
In the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, the head of the Armenian
government said that the goal of negotiations with Azerbaijan should be “the
defense of the achievements of the liberation struggle waged for the
sovereignty and security of the Karabakh people.”
“Any solution reached as a result of negotiations that will be considered
acceptable for the governments of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh can be regarded
as such only if it is popularly endorsed by people in Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinian concluded.
Outlined ‘Strategic Goals’ Call For Higher Growth Rates, Says Economist
• Artak Khulian
Economist Bagrat Asatrian
Economist Bagrat Asatrian describes the long-term strategic goals outlined by
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on August 6 as ‘fantastic’, stressing
that much higher growth rates are needed to fulfill them.
Addressing a rally in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of Stepanakert last night,
Pashinian unveiled a list of strategic goals that he said Armenian governments
should achieve by 2050. In particular, he said that in the next three decades
Armenia’s population should grow from the current 3 million to at least 5
million people and the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) should be
increased 15 times.
Anticipating skeptical assessments by economists and analysts, Pashinian
stressed in his speech that after achieving “the impossible” during the 2018
“velvet revolution”, Armenians are no longer interested in “what is possible.”
“What is possible to implement is no longer interesting for us. We are
interested in what everyone considers to be impossible to realize. Because the
Armenian people have already realized what is impossible!” he said.
Asatrian, who served as governor of Armenia’s Central Bank in 1994-1998, told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am) on Tuesday that Armenia needs to
dramatically accelerate its rate of development to get on track for the goals
outlined by the prime minister. Otherwise, he said, it will be impossible to
achieve them by 2050.
Asatrian assessed the current rate of growth as positive, but still
insufficient. “We have semi-annual results of [economic activity] at 6.5
percent, which can be said to be a good rate, especially given the qualitative
shifts. But at this rate of growth we will at best quadruple our GDP in 30
years. In other words, we need to grow three to four times faster to achieve
that result,” said Asatrian.
United Nations Population Fund Assistant Representative Tsovinar Harutiunian
attached importance to the population growth benchmark set by Pashinian, but
said significant changes in a number of areas are needed to achieve that.
“We can evaluate it only if we see much more specific programs, including
calculations, resources, a timetable and expected outcomes,” Harutiunian said.
The UN Population Fund currently estimates that Armenia’s population will be
reduced by 150,000 by 2050.
Armenia’s former President Serzh Sarkisian declared in 2017 a strategic goal of
increasing the country’s population to 4 million by 2040.
Karabakh Capital Hosts Opening Ceremony For Pan-Armenian Games
The ceremonial opening of the 7th Summer Pan-Armenian Games in Stepanakert,
Nagorno-Karabakh, August 6, 2019
The Seventh Summer Pan-Armenian Games opened in Stepanakert in a ceremony held
at the Nagorno-Karabakh capital’s stadium on August 6.
The quadrennial Games bringing together hundreds of ethnic Armenian athletes
from around the world are designed to foster closer relationships between
Armenia and its far-flung Diaspora.
This year Stepanakert has been chosen to co-host the Games. Most of the
competitions, however, will still be held the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
Armenia is an ethnically homogenous country that has a population of about 3
million. But twice as many ethnic Armenians are believed to live abroad. Most
of them are descendants of survivors of the 1915 massacres in Ottoman Turkey
that more than two dozen governments of the world as well as many historians
recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Summer Pan-Armenian games have been held in Armenia since 1999. In 2014, the
first winter Pan-Armenian Games took place in the Armenian ski resort town of
Tsaghkadzor.
Nearly 5,300 athletes and sports delegation members coming from more than three
dozen countries are attending the current Games that feature sports like
soccer, basketball, volleyball, golf, swimming, badminton, tennis, track and
field athletics, cycling and others. The Games will close in Yerevan on August
17.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian also attended the opening ceremony at
Stepanakert’s Stepan Shahumian Republican Stadium.
Meeting with organizers of the Games earlier on Tuesday, Pashinian called it
“symbolic” that this year the opening of the pan-Armenian sporting event takes
place in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital. He said that the Games can become “a
good platform for our pan-national conversation.”
“I think that it will be very useful if we really manage to expand the idea of
pan-Armenianism. In this sense, of course, the Pan-Armenian Games have a very
important and exceptional significance,” the head of the Armenian government
underscored.
Addressing a rally in Stepanakert the day before, Pashinian also called for a
pan-Armenian consolidation. Outlining a number of strategic goals that he said
Armenians should achieve by 2050, Pashinian said that “Artsakh
[Nagorno-Karabakh] is Armenia, period.”
The remark was strongly condemned by Azerbaijan that does not recognize
Nagorno-Karabakh’s sovereignty and considers it to be its territory.
Azerbaijani media quoted presidential aide Hikmet Haciyev as describing
Pashinian’s statement as provocative and stressing that by such rhetoric
Armenia’s leadership is bringing the region to the verge of a “serious crisis.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an
Armenian-populated region that has been de-facto independent from Baku after a
three-year war in the early 1990s, in which an estimated 30,000 people were
killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced.
Despite a 1994 ceasefire, loss of life has continued in the conflict zone in
recurrent border skirmishes and sporadic fighting.
An internationally mediated peace process spearheaded by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group has so far failed to produce a
lasting settlement of the conflict.
Press Review
“Zhoghovurd” says that apart from being an occasion for strengthening ties
among Armenians from around the world, pan-Armenian Games also provide a good
opportunity for local businesses. The paper reminds its readers that this year
the opening of the Games is due to take place in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital
of Stepanakert on August 6. “It is several days now that hotels and inns in and
around Stepanakert have had no vacant rooms and local restaurants and cafes
have stayed very busy. Even people who have never rented out their apartments
before have now done so,” the paper reports.
Lragir.am suggests that by deploring in his speech at a rally in Stepanakert on
August 5 “any attempt to bring in foreign forces in settling domestic Armenian
affairs” Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian hinted at a possible external
factor in Nagorno-Karabakh’s presidential elections slated for 2020. The online
paper claims that plausible candidates in the upcoming elections may be linked
to certain Russian circles.
“Aravot” regards Prime Minister Pashinian’s references to a ‘secret report’
that was drawn up still under the previous government and describing Armenia as
an ‘institutionally paralyzed and failed state” as an attempt to justify the
current situation with the “heavy legacy of the past.” At the same time, the
daily’s editor writes: “The old system did have some major shortcomings and was
largely inefficient, but it did solve some problems in some ways. The old
system was based on corrupt money and those responsible for specific spheres
managed to provide quick fixes using that corrupt money when things got worse.
It could not last for long. The system was doomed to collapse sooner or later.
Creating a clean system that will work like it does in civilized countries is
very difficult but doable.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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