Friday,
Aliyev Alleges Armenian-Iranian ‘Conspiracy’
• Lusine Musayelian
• Aza Babayan
Azerbaijan -- President Ilham Aliyev addresses a virtual summit of the
Commonwealth of Independent States,
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Friday accused Iran and Armenia of using
Azerbaijani territory for drug trafficking, prompting swift rebuttals from both
neighbors.
“After restoring its 130-kilometer border with Iran, which was under Armenian
control for 30 years, Azerbaijan stopped the illegal trafficking of narcotics
from Iran to Armenia and on to Europe through Azerbaijan’s Jebrail district,”
Aliyev said during a virtual summit of former Soviet republics.
“Armenia and Iran conspired to use Azerbaijan’s occupied territories to traffic
drugs to Europe,” he charged without producing any proof of his allegations.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian denied the allegations when he addressed the
summit from Yerevan.
“I want to point out that we have been very closely cooperating with Iran’s
law-enforcement bodies and very productively fighting against drug trafficking,”
said Pashinian.
Iran rejected Aliyev’s “astonishing” claims in stronger terms. The Iranian
Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said that they serve Israel’s
geopolitical interests and will further damage Azerbaijani-Iranian relations.
Tajikistan - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (R) and Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian meet in Dushanbe, September 17, 2021.
In written comments released by the ministry, Khatibzadeh said that Baku is
sticking to “baseless statements” despite privately sending “positive messages”
to Tehran. The Islamic Republic will respond to that accordingly, he said.
Azerbaijani-Iranian relations deteriorated significantly after Azerbaijani
authorities imposed on September 12 heavy duties on Iranian trucks transporting
goods to Armenia. Iran held large-scale military exercises along its border with
Azerbaijan earlier this month.
Senior Iranian officials have since repeatedly accused Baku of harboring Sunni
Muslim militants and Israeli security personnel near that frontier. Aliyev again
rejected the Iranian accusations in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.
The Iranian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers spoke by phone on Tuesday in a bid
to defuse the tensions. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
reportedly told his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov that Tehran expects
a solution to “the problem of cargo transit.”
Armenian and Iranian leaders have also discussed the problem in recent weeks.
Yerevan has pledged to complete before the end of this year the reconstruction
of an alternative Armenian road that will allow Iranian trucks to bypass
Azerbaijani-controlled territory.
Armenian Security Chief Said To Back Anti-Western Statement
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- The National Security Service headquarters in Yerevan.
The director of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) has reportedly joined
his counterparts from Russia and other ex-Soviet republics in accusing the West
of seeking to destabilize the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States.
Armen Abazian attended their meeting in Moscow on Wednesday hosted by Sergei
Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service.
An SVR statement on the meeting said participants discussed “the West’s
unconstructive influence on our countries” under the guise of democracy
promotion.
“The heads of the special services were of the common opinion that the processes
are of systematic character and are aimed at destabilizing the political
situation in CIS countries,” the SVR said in a statement. “The involvement of
nongovernmental and international organizations in these processes is
coordinated by Western intelligence services.”
The security chiefs of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed to step up joint
efforts to “counter those processes.”
As of Friday evening, the press offices of the NSS and Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian declined to confirm that Yerevan agrees with the SVR’s claims.
In its five-year policy program approved by the Armenian parliament in August,
Pashinian’s government described closer ties with the United States and the
European Union as a foreign policy priority. Pashinian has repeatedly made that
clear in his contacts with U.S. and EU officials.
Earlier this year the EU pledged to provide Armenia with up to 2.6 billion euros
($3.1 billion) in economic assistance and investments over the next five years.
Pashinian said the funding will help to “introduce more European values in our
country.”
More Questions Arise About Firms Run By Armenian Speaker’s Brother
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Road works in Shirak province.
Sirush Davtian is 65, lives in a modest village house and doesn’t quite look
like a neophyte entrepreneur. Yet the ailing single woman is listed on a state
business registry as the sole owner of a construction company set up in February
with 140 million drams ($290,000) in capital.
Davtian refused to answer any questions from an RFE/RL correspondent who visited
her home in Ushi, a village 30 kilometers northwest of Yerevan. Her brother
laughed off her de jure connection to the company, telling the journalist to
look for its real owners elsewhere.
The company called Euroasphalt-1 is one of at least two businesses run by
Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian’s brother Karlen. The other one,
Euroasphalt, had an authorized capital of just over $100 when it was founded by
two little-known individuals in March 2018. Karlen Simonian became its executive
director early this year.
Euroasphalt won recently two government contracts for rural road construction
worth a combined $1.4 million, raising suspicions of a conflict of interest and
even corruption. Deputy Prime Minister Suren Papikian assured RFE/RL’s Armenian
Service late last month that this was the result of transparent and fair
tenders, rather than government connections.
Alen Simonian, who is a figure close to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian,
condemned media outlets for questioning the integrity of those deals when he
spoke with journalists earlier this week. “I don’t answer questions from the
yellow press,” the speaker said when asked to comment on his brother’s
entrepreneurial activities.
Armenia - Sirush Davtian's house in Ushi village.
Euroasphalt won one of the contracts worth about 400 million drams ($830,000)
after bidding just 50,000 drams ($103) less than another construction company.
Speaking with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, senior executives of the defeated firms
avoided criticizing the outcome of the contest. They hinted that they do not
want to antagonize the government because they hope to win similar tenders in
the future.
Vahe Sarukhanian, an investigative journalist who has also written about Karlen
Simonian’s involvement in business, described the tiny margin of Euroasphalt’s
victory in the bidding as suspicious.
“In the past, the [former ruling] Republican Party’s government was widely
criticized for the fact that the organizers of tenders would inform their
cronies’ firms that a particular company is bidding a particular amount of money
and that they must bid slightly less to win and then sort other things out with
them,” explained Sarukhanian.
“I don’t know what happened in this case,” he said. “I have no evidence to voice
accusations. But logical suspicions definitely arise and corruption risks cannot
be excluded.”
Armenia - Speaker Alen Simonian chairs a session of the National Assembly,
September 13, 2021.
As an outspoken opposition parliamentarian, Pashinian had for years alleged
corrupt practices in tenders won by individuals linked to Armenia’s former
governments. He claimed to have eliminated “systemic corruption” in the country
after coming to power in 2018.
Neither Karlen Simonian nor other Euroasphalt representatives could be reached
for comment.
It emerged on Thursday one of the company’s two officially registered addresses
is the same as that of a Yerevan apartment where Simonian’s mother currently
lives. The other address could not be located.
The speaker’s brother is also the deputy director of the TS Construction
company, a concrete producer and supplier. An Armenian civic group revealed
recently that it donated over $10,000 to Pashinian’s Civil Contract party during
this year’s parliamentary election campaign.
Truce Violations Reported In Karabakh
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Armenian soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint on the road
leading to Kalbacar, near the village of Charektar, November 25, 2020
One Azerbaijani soldier was killed and six Armenian servicemen wounded in
Nagorno-Karabakh in skirmishes reported late on Thursday.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that the soldier was killed by Armenian
sniper fire.
The Karabakh Armenian army denied any responsibility for his death. It reported
later in the evening that six of its soldiers manning an outpost in Karabakh’s
east were wounded after coming under Azerbaijani fire.
A statement by the Defense Army added that Russian peacekeeping forces deployed
in Karabakh were immediately alerted about the truce violation denied by the
Azerbaijani side.
Citing the army, Karabakh’s state minister, Artak Beglarian, said shortly after
midnight that shootouts also broke out at several other sections of the “line of
contact” around Karabakh but stopped shortly afterwards.
“The situation has now stabilized along the entire line of contact,” Beglarian
wrote on Facebook. “The military and political leadership of Artsakh
(Nagorno-Karabakh) is taking urgent steps to further stabilize the situation,
making necessary decisions and communicating with relevant parties.”
The official also said that although two of the wounded Karabakh soldiers are in
a serious condition their lives are not at risk.
The skirmishes were one of the most serious violations of a ceasefire agreement
which Russia brokered last November to stop the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over
the disputed territory.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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