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    Categories: 2022

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 03/19/2022

                                        Saturday, 


Armenia Calls On UN To ‘Restore Neutrality’ In Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict


The building of Armenia’s Foreign Ministry in Yerevan.


Armenia has demanded that the United Nations take steps “to restore its neutral 
position in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict” as it protested the 
participation of the global organization’s officials in an event that Azerbaijan 
held in a key Karabakh town earlier this week.

Acting UN Resident Coordinator in Armenia Lila Pieters Yahia was invited to 
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday and informed that the ministry “strongly 
condemns the involvement of the UN Office in Azerbaijan in the event organized 
in Shushi on March 18.”

The ministry said that a note of protest was handed to the UN representative in 
this regard.

Azerbaijan organized an event in Shushi (Susa) on Friday dedicated to the 30th 
anniversary of the country’s membership in the UN. Baku said that the UN 
resident coordinator in Azerbaijan and other representatives of the organization 
participated in the event during which a UN flag was raised in Shushi.

The UN did not immediately comment on the reaction in Yerevan.

Earlier, Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities also condemned 
Azerbaijan’s holding of such an event in Shushi.

Stepanakert accused official Baku of trying to use international structures in 
its policy aimed at “legitimizing the results of its aggression” against 
Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

Shushi (Susa) is a key town in Nagorno-Karabakh contested by both Armenians and 
Azerbaijanis. Ethnic Armenians took control of the town in 1992 as they fought a 
separatist war against Azerbaijan following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijani forces regained control of Shushi during the second Karabakh war in 
2020. The capture of the strategic town by Azerbaijan marked a turning point in 
the hostilities and was followed by a Moscow-brokered ceasefire that brought 
Russian peacekeepers to the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s de-facto authorities consider Shushi and other areas of the 
former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast proper currently controlled by 
Azerbaijan to be occupied territories.

Baku considers the town and the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh to be Azerbaijan’s 
sovereign territory.



France ‘Ready’ To Support Armenian-Azerbaijani Peace Talks

        • Siranuysh Gevorgian
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian


In separate phone calls with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts this 
week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said that as a co-chair of 
the OSCE Minsk Group France is ready to make efforts to support the negotiation 
process between Yerevan and Baku over a peace deal.

According to the French Foreign Ministry, in telephone conversations with Ararat 
Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, Le Drian highlighted the importance of stability 
and peace in the South Caucasus and stressed the readiness of Paris for 
consultations with the countries of the region.

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it had applied to the OSCE Minsk 
Group co-chairs (France, the United States and Russia) to organize 
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on a peace treaty “on the basis of the UN 
Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 
Helsinki Final Act.”

It followed a statement by Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Bayramov that Baku had 
submitted a five-point proposal to Yerevan to normalize relations.

In his conversations with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, Le 
Drian also reportedly expressed concern about the recent tensions on the ground 
and called for all possible measures to be taken to reduce them.

The top French diplomat, in particular, stressed the importance of contacts 
between the sides on the issue of restoring gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh, 
which was disrupted earlier this month due to a damaged pipeline passing via 
Baku-controlled territory.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities on Saturday said that gas supply 
to the region had been partially restored after the completion of maintenance 
work on the gas pipeline.

Earlier, Stepanakert accused Baku of not allowing Armenian maintenance workers 
to enter the territory controlled by Azerbaijan for repairs, as a result of 
which the region was deprived of gas supply for 11 days amid freezing 
temperatures.

During his telephone conversation with Mirzoyan, the French foreign minister 
also welcomed the recent visit of the Armenian foreign minister to Turkey, 
stressing that France “encourages continued negotiations on the normalization of 
relations between the two countries.”

The situation in Ukraine was also reportedly discussed during both conversations.


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