Thursday, July 29, 2021
Armenia To Buy 500,000 More Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccines
July 29, 2021
• Tatevik Lazarian
Canada - Empty vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
vaccine are seen at The Michener Institute, in Toronto.
The Armenian government said on Thursday that it will buy 500,000 doses of
coronavirus vaccines soon to step up its vaccination campaign which has made
slow progress so far.
The government allocated about 3.5 billion drams ($7.3 million) for the purchase
of 300,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 200,000 doses of another
COVID-19 jab developed by China’s Sinopharm corporation.
A government statement said that they will be shipped to Armenia through the
World Health Organization’s global COVAX Facility scheme. It gave no concrete
time frames for their delivery.
According to the Armenian Ministry of Health, the country of about 3 million has
received a total of 272,460 doses of AstraZeneca, Sputnik V and Coronavac
vaccines to date.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian said
only about 163,000 vaccine shots have been administered since the launch of the
government’s immunization campaign in April.
The official figure stood at just over 131,000 on July 19 and more than 152,500
on July 26, suggesting that roughly 3,000 Armenians are inoculated on a daily
basis at present.
The vaccination process progressed much more slowly until this month. Avanesian
expressed hope that it will accelerate further after the delivery of the new
batches of vaccines.
The minister at the same time reaffirmed government plans for administrative
measures designed to encourage people to get vaccinated. In particular, she told
reporters, public sector employees as well as workers of companies providing
public services may soon be required to take regular coronavirus tests at their
own expense in case of refusing vaccination.
An opinion poll commissioned by the U.S. International Republican Institute and
released in April suggested that 71 percent of Armenians do not want to get
vaccinated.
Avanesian insisted on Monday that public attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines
have changed significantly since then. But she said many people are in no rush
to get them because of relatively low coronavirus infection rates recorded by
Armenian health authorities since the beginning of June.
The minister reiterated on Thursday that the daily number of coronavirus cases
is now rising slowly but steadily and that the vaccines are essential for
preventing another wave of infections this fall.
The Ministry of Health reported that 233 people tested for the coronavirus in
the past day, up from less than 100 cases a day routinely recorded in June. It
also registered 10 more deaths directly or indirectly caused by COVID-19.
U.S. House Curbs Military Aid To Azerbaijan
July 29, 2021
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are sworn in on the House floor on
the first day of the new session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington,
U.S. January 3, 2017.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted late on Wednesday to restrict U.S.
military assistance to Azerbaijan because of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
A bipartisan amendment co-sponsored by about two dozen pro-Armenian lawmakers
blocks any such aid that can be provided under Washington’s Foreign Military
Financing and International Military Education and Training programs.
“This bill sends a clear signal that we will not aid or tolerate authoritarian
regimes that threaten peace and security, especially when those actions are
aimed at a fellow democracy,” said congressman Frank Pallone, the main author of
the measure hailed by Armenian-American lobby groups.
“The House today took a principled, bipartisan stand against Azerbaijan,
overwhelmingly voting down U.S. military aid in response to Baku’s
ethnic-cleansing of Artsakh (Karabakh) and ongoing aggression against Armenia,”
said Raffi Hamparian, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America
(ANCA).
“This amendment sends the right message that Azerbaijan will not be rewarded for
its hostile actions against the Armenian people,” said Mariam Khaloyan of the
Armenian Assembly of America.
Nagorno-Karabakh - U.S. Representatives Frank Pallone (R) and Tulsi Gabbard meet
officials in Stepanakert, 20Sep2017.
The bill does not bar the U.S. Department of Defense from continuing to transfer
military equipment to Azerbaijan.
The U.S. Congress had banned any kind of direct assistance to Baku through
Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act passed in 1992. But a decade later it
allowed U.S. administrations to waive the ban to help Azerbaijan’s military and
security agencies.
The administration of former President Donald Trump significantly increased the
security aid to Baku, reportedly providing over $100 million worth of equipment
and other assistance to Azerbaijan’s State Border Guard Service in 2018-2019
alone.
Azerbaijani border guards also participated in last year’s Armenian-Azerbaijani
war in Karabakh. Many of them are now deployed along Azerbaijan’s border with
Armenia where serious cross-border skirmishes have been a regular occurrence for
the last two months.
During the autumn war, then Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden urged
the Trump administration to freeze U.S. aid and “stop the flow of military
equipment to Azerbaijan.”
But Biden too waived Section 907 in April this year three months after being
sworn in as U.S. president. The U.S. House expressed concern over the waiver on
Wednesday.
U.S. Urges Armenia, Azerbaijan To De-Escalate Violence
July 29, 2021
U.S. -- State Department spokesperson Ned Price pauses while speaking during a
media briefing at the State Department in Washington, July 7, 2021
The United States has condemned the latest deadly skirmishes on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border and called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to take
“immediate steps to de-escalate the situation.”
“The United States condemns the recent escalation of violence along the
international border between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” the State Department
spokesman, Ned Price, said in a statement issued on Wednesday after three
Armenian soldiers were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijani troops.
Philip Reeker, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and
Eurasian affairs, expressed concern at the deadly fighting in a phone call with
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. The latter blamed Armenia for the
escalation.
The Armenian military says that the fighting broke out when Azerbaijani troops
tried to capture one of its border outposts in Armenia’s northeastern
Gegharkunik province.
Tensions in Gegharkunik’s border zone steadily increased over the past week. The
U.S. ambassador to Armenia, Lynne Tracy, visited the mountainous area on Monday.
“Continued tensions along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border underscore the fact that
only a comprehensive resolution that addresses all outstanding issues can
normalize relations between the two countries and allow the people of the region
to live together peacefully,” said Price.
He said Baku and Yerevan should “return as soon as possible to substantive
discussions under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to achieve a
long-term political settlement to the conflict.”
In a joint statement released in April, the U.S., Russian and French mediators
co-heading the Minsk Group likewise called for renewed talks on a “comprehensive
and sustainable” resolution of the Karabakh conflict based on their pre-war
peace proposals.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday again accused Baku of
continuing to ignore the mediators’ appeal.
Armenia Seeks More Russian Troop Deployments On Azeri Border
July 29, 2021
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - An Armenian solider at an army outpost on the border with Azerbaijan,
July 22, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian proposed that Russia deploy more troops along
Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan after Armenian and Azerbaijani forces stationed
there again exchanged fire early on Thursday.
Tensions rose further in recent days at border sections separating Armenia’s
northeastern Gegharkunik province from the Kelbajar district handed back to
Azerbaijan after the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Three Armenian soldiers were killed and four others wounded there early on
Wednesday in what the Armenian military described as a failed Azerbaijani
attempt to capture one of its border posts in the mountainous area. Baku accused
the Armenian side of provoking one of the worst armed incidents reported in the
Karabakh conflict zone after the six-week war.
The heavy fighting stopped later on Wednesday after the two sides reached a
ceasefire agreement brokered by Moscow.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani forces breached the truce
and again fired at its troops on Thursday morning. It said an Armenian army
officer was wounded as a result.
“Contrary to efforts of the Armenian government and the international community,
the situation along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is not stabilizing,” said
Pashinian. “Azerbaijan is carrying on with aggressive rhetoric and actions while
ignoring the international community’s proposals aimed at a political and
long-term settlement of the conflict.”
“Given the current situation, I think it makes sense to consider the deployment
of Russian border guard outposts along the entire Armenian-Azerbaijani border,”
he said at the start of a weekly meeting of his cabinet. “It would enable us to
carry out border delimitation and demarcation without a risk of armed clashes.”
“We are going to discuss this subject with our Russian partners,” added
Pashinian.
A Russian military post on a highway running along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border.
Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, already deployed army soldiers and
border guards to the South Caucasus country’s Syunik province late last year to
defend it against possible Azerbaijani attacks. Syunik borders districts
southwest of Karabakh which were retaken by Azerbaijan during the war stopped by
a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November.
A senior Armenian official said on July 7 that Russia has begun preparations for
a similar deployment to Gegharkunik’s volatile border areas. Moscow has still
not publicly confirmed that.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quick to comment on Pashinian’s proposal.
The RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as telling reporters that Moscow is
making continuous efforts to strengthen the ceasefire regime and help Yerevan
and Baku take confidence-building measures.
Asked whether Russia is ready to deploy border guards along Armenia’s entire
border with Azerbaijan, Peskov said: “Contacts with Yerevan are going on. I have
nothing to add.”
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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