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 Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.