RFE/RL Armenian Report – 03/03/2020

                                        Tuesday, 

Armenia ‘Respects’ Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic Aspirations


Georgia -- Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia (R) and his Armenian 
counterpart Nikol Pashinian meet in Tbilisi, March 3, 2020.

Armenia respects Georgia’s desire to join NATO and the European Union and 
believes that it must not hamper closer ties between the two neighboring 
nations, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said during an official visit to Tbilisi 
on Tuesday.

“We respect Georgia’s aspirations to integrate into the Euro-Atlantic area,” 
Pashinian told his Georgian counterpart Giorgi Gakharia at the start of their 
talks.

“It has happened so that our countries have different ideas about security 
systems, but I believe we have a common idea about security,” he went on. 
“Armenia cannot be a security threat to Georgia, and Georgia cannot be a 
security threat to Armenia.”

Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization 
(CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Pashinian has repeatedly pledged to 
keep his country anchored to Russia politically, militarily and economically 
since he swept to power in 2018.

Echoing statements by former Armenian leaders, Pashinian insisted in Tbilisi 
that Armenia’s membership in the EEU and Georgia’s Association Agreement with 
the EU create “new opportunities” for expanding bilateral trade.

Georgian-Armenian relations can also be cemented by the two countries’ 
“commitment to democratic values,” he said.

Gakharia similarly stressed the importance of “democratic development” in the 
region when he spoke after the talks.

“Our countries have a millennia-old history of friendly relations and we must 
work hard every day to make our cooperation even more productive,” the Georgian 
prime minister told a joint news briefing. He too downplayed Tbilisi’s and 
Yerevan’s “different foreign policy directions.”

“There is no doubt that Armenian-Georgian partnership is one of the most 
important guarantees of stability in our region,” Pashinian said for his part.

Neither leader announced specific agreements reached as a result of their 
negotiations. According to an Armenian government statement, they discussed ways 
of expanding bilateral trade as well as “promising projects on transport, energy 
and other areas.”




Yerevan Rules Out Turkish Role In Karabakh Settlement


Azerbaijan -- Azeri President Ilham Aliyev receives prayer beads from his 
Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in Baku, February 25, 2020

Armenia again ruled out Turkey’s involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiating 
process on Tuesday after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with 
international mediators trying to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal.

The U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group held the 
rare meeting with Turkey’s top diplomat in Ankara on Monday.

According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Cavusoglu told them that they should 
do more to resolve the Karabakh conflict. He said the conflict’s resolution 
“should be in full respect of the sovereignty, the territorial integrity and the 
internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan,” reported the ministry.

Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian responded scathingly to Cavusoglu 
later on Monday, tweeting a quote from the Gospel of Luke: “Physician, heal 
thyself!”

“With its unfriendly policy towards Armenia and the Armenian people, which in 
the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also takes the form of unilateral 
military support for Azerbaijan, Turkey cannot play any role in the 
Nagorno-Karabakh peace process,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Anna 
Naghdalian, said the following day.

Successive Turkish governments have lent full and unconditional support to 
Azerbaijan in the Karabakh conflict. They have also made the normalization of 
Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on a Karabakh settlement acceptable to 
Baku. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed this policy when he 
visited Baku late last month.




No New Coronavirus Cases Reported In Armenia Yet

        • Susan Badalian

Armenia -- Newly arrived pasengers from Italy at Zvartnots airport, Yerevan, 
March 3, 2020.

An Armenian man who returned from Iran late last week remains the sole person 
diagnosed with coronavirus in Armenia so far, Health Minister Arsen Torosian 
said on Tuesday.

Torosian also said that the 29-year-old man hospitalized at the weekend does not 
have a fever and is not displaying other disease symptoms.

The 31 other individuals, who are kept in quarantine at a disused luxury hotel 
in the resort town of Tsaghkadzor, are also “feeling well,” he told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service.

“They will stay in Tsaghkadzor for 12 more days,” he said. “They will undergo 
two coronavirus tests. If they test negative we will send them home.”

The quarantined individuals were in physical contact with the infected man, 
according to health authorities. They include an ambulance crew that transported 
him to a Yerevan hospital and some passengers of a plane that evacuated Armenian 
nationals from Iran last Friday.

In Torosian’s words, a total of 134 people in Armenia have tested negative for 
the virus in recent days.

The minister reported later in the day that he telephoned his Iranian 
counterpart Saeed Namaki to discuss the continuing spread of the virus in Iran, 
which infected 1,500 people and killed at least 66 of them as of Monday. He said 
Namaki assured him that Iranian authorities have “sufficient medical capacities” 
to cope with the grave outbreak.


Iran -- A woman has her temperature checked and her hands disinfected as she 
enters the Palladium Shopping Center in Tehran, March 3, 2020

The two ministers spoke as the Armenian government began enforcing its ban on 
virtually all types of cargo traffic through the Armenian-Iranian border. The 
government closed the border for individual travellers and suspended 
Yerevan-Tehran flights last week.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged Armenians to avoid nonessential 
travel to another coronavirus-hit country, Italy. But he made clear that the 
government has no plans yet to halt flights from Yerevan to Milan and Rome.

The Irish budget airline Ryanair carried out the latest Milan-Yerevan flight on 
Tuesday, bringing 69 people to Armenia. All of them were briefly inspected at 
Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport by medics deployed by the Armenian 
Ministry of Health.

One of those passengers was taken to hospital after complaining of respiratory 
problems experienced by him on Monday. A sanitary inspector at Zvartnots, Hayk 
Kirakosian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that the passenger will be examined 
“in laboratory conditions.”

Most of the other passengers of the Milan-Yerevan flight wore medical masks as 
they walked out of the airport. “There are more masked people here than there 
[in Italy,]” said one of them. “We just put them on to make sure we don’t bring 
the virus here. But we have fully been checked.”




Former Defense Chief Risks Fresh Charges

        • Nane Sahakian

Armenia -- Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian speaks to reporters, Yerevan, 
March 3, 2020.

Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian could be indicted in an ongoing criminal 
investigation into a 2010 privatization deal which Armenian law-enforcement 
autorities say cost the state millions of dollars in losses.

DzoraHEK, a medium-sized hydroelectric plant located in Armenia’s northen Lori 
province, was sold by former President Serzh Sarkisian’s government to a private 
company for 3.6 billion drams ($7.5 million).

Citing a police inquiry, Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General claimed in 
May last year that the sell-off price was set well below DzoraHEK’s market value 
estimated by a government agency at around 8 billion drams ($16.8 million). It 
said it has assigned another law-enforcement body, the Special Investigative 
Service (SIS), to investigate the “substantial damage” caused to on the state.

The SIS announced late on Monday that it now considers Ohanian a suspect in the 
case because the hydroelectric plant belonged to the Armenian Defense Ministry 
prior to its privatization. It said that the deal was proposed by the ministry.

Ohanian, who served as defense minister from 2008-2016, categorically denied 
this on Tuesday. He insisted that it was the now defunct Energy Ministry that 
negotiated with the buyer and proposed the terms of the deal to the government.

“The privatization process was mainly carried out by the Energy Ministry,” 
Ohanian told reporters.

The plant was handed over to the Defense Ministry in 2001 one year after Serzh 
Sarkisian was appointed as defense minister. He held that post until 2007.

Some media outlets suggested in 2010 that the plant’s new owner, an 
offshore-registered firm called Dzoraget Hydro, is controlled by Miakel 
Minasian, Sarkisian’s son-in-law. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appeared to 
link Minasian to the the Soviet-era facility in September. Minasian has not yet 
commented on that.

In 2016, the plant was sold to another company, Energo Invest Holding, which is 
reportedly owned by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian.

Ohanian is already standing trial, along with former President Robert Kocharian 
and two other former officials, on coup charges stemming from the 2008 
post-election violence in Yerevan. All four defendants deny the accusations. 
Only Kocharian is held in detention.


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