Friday,
Senior Armenian Official Sees No Turkish Preconditions
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Eduard Aghajanian, the chairman of the Armenian parliament committee
on foreign relations, holds a news conference, Yerevan, April 15, 2022.
A senior Armenian lawmaker representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil
Contract party insisted on Friday that Turkey has not set or reaffirmed
preconditions for normalizing its relations with Armenia.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that Yerevan must
take “concrete steps” to negotiate a peace accord sought by Baku and open a land
corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. That, he said, is essential for
normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations.
“I think that [Cavusoglu’s] statement mentioned by you was not [an expression
of] preconditions,” Eduard Aghajanian, the chairman of the Armenian parliament
committee on foreign relations, told reporters.
“In essence, Turkey has always come out with this position which obviously has
never been acceptable to us,” he said.
Aghajanian complained about a “gap” between Ankara’s statements and actions. “Of
course one of our objectives is to do everything so that this discrepancy
doesn’t exist anymore or is at least reduced to a minimum,” he said.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry did not react to Cavusoglu’s remarks which
followed four rounds of normalization talks held by Turkish and Armenian envoys
this year.
The Turkish minister has repeatedly made clear that Ankara is coordinating the
Turkish-Armenian dialogue with Baku. He stressed on Thursday that Turkey and
Azerbaijan are “one nation and two states.”
The Turks have for decades made the establishment of diplomatic relations with
Yerevan and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border conditional on a
settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Baku.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan complained last November about “new
preconditions” set by Ankara.
“Among them is a ‘corridor’ connecting Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan,” Mirzoyan
told the French daily Le Figaro.
The Armenian government has ruled out such an exterritorial corridor, saying
that Armenia and Azerbaijan have been discussing only conventional transport
links in their talks mediated by Russia and the European Union.
Armenia Said To Seek Arms Deals With India
• Sargis Harutyunyan
India - A Sky Striker attack drone manufactured by Adani Defense & Aerospace
company.
A delegation of Armenian military officials has reportedly visited India to
explore the possibility of buying Indian-manufactured combat drones and other
weapons.
The Mumbai-based news service dnaindia.com reported this week that the
delegation “came armed with a shopping list” when it met with Indian officials
last month. Citing an unnamed official, it said that drones “figured prominently
on the list.”
The online publication gave no other details of the talks. Nor did it say if any
agreements were reached by the two sides.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry on Friday declined to comment on the reported visit
of its representatives to India or its broader interest in Indian military
hardware.
Visiting Yerevan earlier this month, a senior official from the Indian Ministry
of External Affairs said India and Armenia are discussing “long-term” military
cooperation as part of their efforts to deepen their ties. The official, Sanjay
Verma, spoke during a session of an Indian-Armenian intergovernmental commission
on bilateral cooperation.
Armenia - Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan meets with Sanjay Verma, an Indian
Ministry of External Affairs secretary, Yerevan, July 4, 2022.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who co-chaired the session with Verma, listed
“defense and military-technical cooperation” among the areas that are “very
promising for our countries.”
Mirzoyan held talks with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in
April on the sidelines of an international conference held in India. It was
their third face-to-face meeting in eight months. Jaishankar visited Armenia
last October.
“India sees Armenia not only as a friend but a good counterweight to Turkey
whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been particularly belligerent on the
Kashmir issue and followed a number of policies inimical to India,” wrote
dnaindia.com. It noted that India’s arch-foe Pakistan is allied to Turkey and
Azerbaijan.
Pakistan strongly supported Azerbaijan during the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war
over Nagorno-Karabakh. But it denied claims that Pakistani soldiers participated
in the six-week war on the Azerbaijani side.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets Indian Foreign Minister
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Yerevan, October13, 2021.
By contrast, India has backed Karabakh peace efforts spearheaded by the United
States, Russia and France. It has backed Armenia in an Armenian-Azerbaijani
border dispute that broke out in May 2021. In a statement issued at the time,
the Indian foreign ministry called on Baku to “pull back forces immediately and
cease any further provocation.”
Armenian military officials had already visited India in August 2018 to discuss
possible arms deals. The Times of India daily reported at the time that they
showed an interest in the Pinaka multiple-launch rocket systems manufactured by
an Indian defense company.
In March 2020, six months before the outbreak of the Karabakh, Indian media
reports claimed that Yerevan will pay $40 million to buy four Swathi weapon
locating radars from their Indian manufacturer. The deal was never publicly
confirmed by the Armenian military.
Armenian Government Explains Entry Ban Imposed On Diaspora Leader
• Artak Khulian
Mourad Papazian, a leader of the Armenian community of France.
Armenia’s government on Friday broke its eight-day silence on an entry ban
imposed by it on a leader of France’s influential Armenian community critical of
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The government’s press office said Mourad Papazian, a co-chairman of the
Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF), was detained at
Yerevan airport and deported back to Paris on July 14 because of organizing an
angry protest against Pashinian’s visit to France last year.
In a statement, the office said that the ethnic Armenian protesters threw
“various objects” at Pashinian’s motorcade when it drove through Paris on June
1, 2021. It described the incident as an “attack” on the prime minister.
The statement also said that Papazian was expelled under an Armenian law that
allows the authorities to impose entry bans on foreign nationals posing a
serious threat to the country’s “state security or public order.”
FRANCE -- French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Armenian Prime minister Nikol
Pashinian give a press briefing following their working lunch at the Elysee
palace in Paris, June 1, 2021
Papazian dismissed the explanation, saying that he did not organize or
participate in that protest. “This is a lie,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Papazian is also a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun), a pan-Armenian party in opposition to Pashinian’s government.
He insisted that he was barred from entering Armenia because of his political
views and activities.
Papazian argued that he visited Yerevan for at least four times after
Pashinian’s June 2021 trip to Paris. “Why did they not ban me from June 1, 2021
to July 13, 2022?” he asked.
France - President Emmanuel Macron, Mourad Papazian (right) and other
French-Armenian leaders visit the Armenian genocide memorial, Paris.
Papazian reportedly participated in one of the daily antigovernment rallies
launched by the Armenian opposition in Yerevan on May 1, 2022. Opposition
leaders have condemned his expulsion.
The CCAF, which is an umbrella structure uniting France’s leading Armenian
organizations, denounced the travel ban on July 15 as an “attack on democracy”
and “brutal blow” to the French-Armenian community.
Pashinian’s office asserted on Friday that the Armenian authorities “have no
reservations about any participant of peaceful protests.”
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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