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 Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.