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    Categories: 2022

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 07/22/2022

                                        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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