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    Categories: 2022

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 07/15/2022

                                        Friday, 


CIA Director Visits Armenia

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia - CIA Director William Burns at a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, .


U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met with Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials during a surprise visit to Yerevan 
on Friday.
In a short statement, the Armenian government said Pashinian and Burns discussed 
“international and regional security,” “processes taking place in the South 
Caucasus” and “the fight against terrorism.”

The statement gave no other details of the meeting which was also attended by 
Armen Abazian, the head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS).

Burns also held separate talks with Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s 
Security Council.

The council’s press office reported that Grigorian briefed him on the Armenian 
government’s peace efforts and security challenges facing the region. It said 
the two men discussed Yerevan’s ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan and Turkey 
“in this context.”

Burns had visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as U.S. 
deputy secretary of state. He urged at the time a greater “sense of urgency” for 
the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the status quo is 
not sustainable.”

His latest trip to Yerevan coincided with an official announcement that the 
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will meet in Tbilisi on Saturday.

Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets CIA Director William Burns, 
Yerevan, .

The trip was first revealed by the Russian news agency Sputnik earlier in the 
day. It said the CIA chief arrived for unspecified “high-level meetings” and 
will spend only several hours in the country.

The Armenian authorities did not confirm or deny the report before issuing the 
official press releases on Burns’s meetings. An NSS spokesman told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian Service that he has “no information” about his visit.

The U.S. Embassy likewise declined to comment. No CIA director has ever visited 
Armenia before.

Tigran Grigorian, an independent political analyst, claimed that U.S. and 
Russian security officials arrived in Armenia in recent days for confidential 
talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.

“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or 
Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with 
Russia,” Grigorian said. “According to my information, Russian and American 
experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit 
could be put in that context.”

Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia 
from 2005 to 2008.



CIA Director ‘Visiting Armenia’

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

US - CIA Director William Burns gestures as he speaks during a House 
Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats in Washington, D.C., April 
15, 2021.


The Armenian and U.S. governments on Friday did not deny reports that Central 
Intelligence Agency Director William Burns is making an unannounced visit to 
Armenia.

Citing unnamed sources, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported that Burns 
arrived in Yerevan in the morning for unspecified “high-level meetings.” He will 
spend only several hours in the country, it said without giving other details.

A spokesperson for Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian Service that he has “no information” about the alleged trip.

Other Armenian government agencies refrained from commenting on it. The press 
office of the government’s Security Council did not answer phone calls 
throughout the day.

The U.S. Embassy said, for its part, that it has no comment on the Sputnik 
report. No CIA director has ever visited Armenia before.

According to Tigran Grigorian, an independent political analyst, U.S. and 
Russian security officials arrived in Armenia in recent days for confidential 
talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.

“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or 
Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with 
Russia,” Grigorian said. “According to my information, Russian and American 
experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit 
could be put in that context.”

Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia 
from 2005 to 2008.

Burns visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as U.S. 
deputy secretary of state. During that trip, he urged a greater “sense of 
urgency” for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the 
status quo is not sustainable.”



Armenian Government Critic Dies During Trial

        • Artak Khulian

Armenia - Entertainment producer and government critic Armen Grigorian.


A vocal critic of Armenia’s government arrested two months ago died during his 
trial in Yerevan on Friday, sparking outcry from the country’s human rights 
ombudswoman and opposition leaders.

Armen Grigorian, a well-known entertainment producer, collapsed in the courtroom 
as his lawyer petitioned the presiding judge to release him from custody. 
Grigorian, 56, was pronounced dead by an ambulance crew that arrived at the 
scene about 10 minutes later.

“They took resuscitation measures but to no avail,” Taguhi Stepanian, the head 
of the national ambulance service, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Stepanian said a forensic examination will ascertain the cause of Grigorian’s 
sudden death.

Grigorian, who for years harshly criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, was 
arrested and indicted on May 18 in connection with a 2021 video in which he made 
disparaging comments about residents of two Armenian regions sympathetic to the 
government. The National Security Service accused him of offending their 
“national dignity.”

Grigorian as well as opposition figures and other government critics rejected 
the accusations as politically motivated. They said the fact that he is held in 
detention pending investigation only proves that he is a political prisoner.

Human rights activists also criticized the criminal proceedings. Some of them 
linked the case to daily antigovernment protests launched by the Armenian 
opposition on May 1.

The state human rights defender, Kristine Grigorian (no relation to Armen), 
expressed outrage at the antigovernment activist’s death, saying that he clearly 
did not receive adequate medical care in prison. She said she has demanded 
“clarifications” from prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice, which runs 
Armenia’s prisons.

“I will be consistent in bringing the culprits to justice,” the ombudswoman 
wrote on Facebook.

Neither the ministry nor the law-enforcement authorities issued any statements 
on Armen Grigorian’s death as of Friday evening.

Grigorian’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, said that his client, who was a medic by 
education, suffered from serious “health problems.”

“He never let us speak up about those problems in the court and other bodies,” 
Melikian said, speaking at an opposition rally in Yerevan held in the evening.

Armenia - Opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelian speaks at a rally in Yerevan, 
.

Organizers and participants of the rally observed a minute of silence in memory 
of Grigorian. Some of them also held his pictures.

Opposition leaders addressing the crowd blamed the authorities and Pashinian in 
particular for the outspoken public figure’s death.

“Armen Grigorian died at the hands of these authorities with the direct 
participation of the investigator, the judge and the prosecutor acting on their 
orders,” one of them, Ishkhan Saghatelian, charged.

The demonstrators chanted “Nikol murderer!” as they marched to the prime 
minister’s office and a Yerevan court that sanctioned Grigorian’s arrest in May. 
Many of them lit candles and laid flowers outside the court building.

Over the past year, the opposition has regularly accused Pashinian’s 
administration of weaponizing pre-trial arrests to try to neutralize its members 
and supporters fighting for regime change.

More than two dozen such individuals are currently under arrest on charges 
stemming from the continuing antigovernment protests. Most of them are accused 
of assaulting riot police. The authorities maintain that the accusations are not 
politically motivated.



West, Russia Again Welcome Turkish-Armenian Dialogue

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Austria - Turkish and Armenian officials hold a fourth round of normalization 
talks in Vienna, July 1, 2022.


The United States, the European Union and Russia have welcomed apparent progress 
made in ongoing negotiations on normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations.

The U.S. State Department reaffirmed strong support for the normalization 
process in response to the first-ever phone call between Turkish President Recep 
Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that took place on 
Monday.

“The Armenian-Turkish dialogue has the potential to increase regional stability, 
curb adverse influences and lead to greater economic development that is 
beneficial to all,” the Armenian Service of the Voice of America quoted the 
department as saying on Wednesday.

Andrea Wiktorin, the head of the EU Delegation in Yerevan, on Friday described 
Pashinian’s call with Erdogan as a “very important step.”

“I hope that it will really lead to a normalization process that will benefit 
both countries,” Wiktorin told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

“We are ready to continue to accompany the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, providing 
it with all kinds of assistance,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, 
Maria Zakharova, said for her part. “We believe that this is in the interests of 
stability and economic prosperity in the region.”

Speaking at a news briefing on Thursday, Zakharova emphasized the fact that the 
first round of Turkish-Armenian normalization talks took place in Moscow on 
January 14.

Special envoys of the two neighboring states met for three more times in Vienna 
in the following months. Their last meeting held on July 1 was followed by an 
announcement that Ankara and Yerevan will open the Turkish-Armenian border to 
citizens of third countries and allow mutual cargo shipments by air “at the 
earliest date possible.”

The Armenian negotiator, Ruben Rubinian, expressed hope on Tuesday that the 
Turkish side will implement these agreements “in the coming months.”

Ankara has for decades made the opening of the border and establishment of 
diplomatic relations with Yerevan conditional on a resolution of the 
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.



French-Armenian Leader ‘Denied Entry To Armenia’


France - President Emmanuel Macron, Mourad Papazian (right) and other 
French-Amrenian leaders visit the Armenian genocide memorial, Paris.


A leader of France’s influential Armenian community critical of Armenia’s 
government was reportedly detained at Yerevan airport and deported back to Paris 
early on Thursday.

“As soon as I arrived in Yerevan I was arrested, placed in a small room, then in 
a transit zone, and my passport was confiscated,” Mourad Papazian said in a 
Facebook post on his return to the French capital.

“I knew that I was banned from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Today, I am banned from 
[Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinian's Armenia,” he wrote.

Papazian said immigration officers at the Zvartnots international airport gave 
no reason for his deportation. He claimed that it was ordered by Pashinian.

Armenia’s government and National Security Service (NSS), which is charge of 
border control, did not comment on what was a rare entry ban slapped on a 
prominent Armenian Diaspora figure.

Papazian is one of the two co-presidents of the CCAF, a coalition of leading 
French-Armenian organizations. He is also a member of the worldwide governing 
Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a pan-Armenian 
party in opposition to Pashinian’s government.

Dashnaktsutyun’s organization in Armenia has been at the forefront of regular 
street protests launched this spring by the country’s main opposition groups 
trying to topple the prime minister. Papazian reportedly took part in one of 
those rallies during a recent trip to Yerevan.

In a statement, the Dashnaktsutyun Bureau condemned his expulsion, linking it to 
recent arrests and prosecution of over a dozen party activists involved in the 
antigovernment protests. It charged that Pashinian is also trying to please 
Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The entry ban was also denounced by Ara Toranian, the other CCAF co-president 
and the publisher of the Paris-based magazine Nouvelles d’Armenie.

“Should this arbitrary measure be attributed to [Papazian’s] political 
position?” Toranian wrote on its website. “If this were the case -- and one 
cannot imagine other reasons -- this expulsion would constitute a serious threat 
to the freedom of opinion of the Diaspora Armenians and an attack on democracy.”

Writing on Facebook hours before boarding the flight to Yerevan, Papazian said 
he is leaving for Armenia to make a “big announcement for September.” He did not 
elaborate.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

 
Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS