RFE/RL Armenian Report – 09/16/2022

                                        Friday, 

Pelosi Confirms Surprise Trip To Armenia

        • Naira Nalbandian

USA – The speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, holds a news 
conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 19, 2022.


The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, confirmed on 
Friday that she will visit Armenia this weekend just days after deadly border 
clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
Pelosi told reporters in Berlin that she will fly to Yerevan with two other 
members of Congress, who both are of Armenian descent, “because we've had an 
ongoing invitation from the Armenians." She said at the same time that the 
surprise trip is the result of a "rather spontaneous" decision.

Pelosi declined to give further details about the trip, saying that traveling 
U.S. lawmakers "don't like to be a target."

"In any case, it is all about human rights and respecting the dignity and worth 
of every person," she said, speaking at a Group of Seven (G7) countries meeting 
in the German capital.

Politico was the first to report on Pelosi’s plans to travel to Armenia on 
Thursday, calling it a “show of support for the country.” She will meet with 
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials, said the U.S. news 
website.

The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, declined to 
comment on the planned trip when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service earlier 
on Friday.

“I think that this is a very important trip because [Pelosi] will be the most 
high-ranking American official to have ever visited Armenia,” said Suren 
Sargsian, an Armenian political analyst.

Armenia, he said, will reeeive “strong diplomatic support” from Washington in 
the wake of the large-scale fighting with Azerbaijan which left more than 200 
soldiers from both sides dead.

“Especially amid the aggression against Armenia, we can show the world that the 
political leadership of the United States is sending a message not only to 
Armenia but also to the Azerbaijani government,” added Sargsian.

Pelosi’s California constituency is home to a large number of Armenian 
Americans. The veteran lawmaker has long backed causes championed by the 
Armenian community in the U.S.

In 2019, Pelosi presided over the passage by the House of Representatives of a 
resolution recognizing the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. “It’s a 
great day for the Congress,” she declared at the time.



Foreign Diplomats Visit War-Hit Armenian Town

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia - A guesthouse in Jermuk damaged by Azerbaijani shelling, September 15, 
2022.


A group of foreign ambassadors and other diplomats visited on Friday the largest 
of the Armenian border settlements shelled by the Azerbaijani army during this 
week’s deadly clashes with Armenian forces.

The Yerevan-based diplomats, among them U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, toured 
Jermuk, Armenia’s most famous spa town 170 kilometers southeast of the capital, 
and inspected damage to its civilian infrastructure during a trip organized by 
the Armenian military. Journalists were allowed to accompany them.

Jermuk was close to one of the epicenters of heavy fighting that broke out at 
several sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on Monday night. The vast 
majority of its residents, notably children and women, were evacuated or fled 
their homes on their own amid cross-border artillery fire. Civilian access to 
the largely deserted town remains strictly limited for security reasons.

Local government officials said that the Azerbaijani shelling damaged a spa 
resort, three guest houses, a children’s playground, an administrative building 
and a cable car line. The cable car director told reporters that about a dozen 
shells landed on the facility and seriously damaged it.

Armenia - The tail of an unexploded rocket sticks out by the main road leading 
out of Jermuk, .

Just outside Jermuk, the tail of an unexploded rocket fired by Azerbaijani 
forces stuck out by the main road leading out of the town.

The fighting also directly affected a dozen other border towns and villages. 
According to the Armenian government, a total of 60 houses and other structures 
were destroyed by the shelling.

Major-General Eduard Asrian, the chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff, met 
with the visiting diplomats and answered their questions. Asrian told them that 
Jermuk and nearby hills were the “main direction of the enemy attacks” launched 
at several sections of the border.

Azerbaijani troops managed to advance a few kilometers into Armenian territory 
in the Jermuk area, he said, adding that they made far more modest territorial 
gains at three other border sections. Although Armenian army units recaptured 
some of their lost positions there, the general went on, a hill 4.5 kilometers 
east of Jermuk remains under Azerbaijani control.

Armenia - Major-General Eduard Asrian meets with foreign diplomats in Jermuk, 
.

Asrian said at the same time that a small Azerbaijani unit occupying the hill is 
nearly surrounded by Armenian forces and will have no choice but to leave it 
within days. He claimed that another group of Azerbaijani soldiers retreated 
towards the Azerbaijani border for the same reason earlier in the day.

According to the Armenian government, at least 135 Armenian soldiers were killed 
during the fighting largely stopped by a ceasefire agreement late on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, we understand that this number is not the final one,” Pashinian 
told members of his government on Friday.

The government has not yet released the number of Armenian soldiers missing in 
action.

The hostilities also reportedly left one Armenian civilian dead and six others 
wounded.



Aliyev Insists On Major Concessions By Armenia

        • Aza Babayan

Uzbekistan -- Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of 
Turkey meet in Samarkand, 


Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday that Armenia must accept his 
terms of a bilateral peace treaty and open a land corridor connecting Azerbaijan 
to its Nakhichevan exclave.

Speaking at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, 
Aliyev also blamed Yerevan for this week’s large-scale fighting on the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

“Azerbaijan presented Armenia with five basic principles of the peace treaty 
which are based on mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity and 
sovereignty,” he said in a speech. “We must now start [formal] discussions on 
the draft without preconditions and artificial delays.”

Those principles were first put forward in March. The Armenian government 
repeatedly said afterwards that they are acceptable to it principles but should 
also be complemented with other elements relating to Nagorno-Karabakh’s future 
status and security. Baku ruled out any talks on Karabakh, saying that Yerevan 
should recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh through the peace treaty.

Aliyev also reiterated Baku’s demands for the opening of the “Zangezur corridor” 
that would pass through Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province which also 
borders Iran.

“The launch of the Zangezur corridor will further increase the transport 
capacity of regional countries,” he said.

The Armenian side rejects these demands, saying that it can only agree to 
conventional transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan envisaged by a 
Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020 war in Karabakh.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Wednesday that Azerbaijan 
unleashed military aggression against Armenia in an attempt to force Yerevan to 
sign the peace deal sought by Baku and cede Armenian territory for the 
“exterritorial corridor.”

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has ruled out such unilateral concessions. 
Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Friday, he demanded that Azerbaijani troops 
withdraw from Armenian border areas captured by them this week and in May 2021.

Pashinian had been scheduled to attend the summit held in the Uzbek city of 
Samarkand. But he cancelled his participation after the outbreak of the border 
clashes on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has personally intervened to try to halt the 
hostilities. He was due to meet with Aliyev on the sidelines of the summit later 
on Friday. A Kremlin spokesman said that the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict will 
be high on the meeting’s agenda.



Yerevan Unhappy With Russian-Led Bloc’s Response To Border Clashes

        • Karlen Aslanian
        • Nane Sahakian

RUSSIA - The leaders of Russia and other CSTO member states enter a hall prior 
to their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, May 16, 2022.


The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has failed to 
properly react to large-scale fighting that erupted on Armenia’s border with 
Azerbaijan earlier this week, a senior Armenian official said on Friday.

The Armenian government appealed to the alliance for help hours after the 
outbreak of the deadly hostilities on the night from Monday to Tuesday. The 
presidents of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan discussed 
the request at an emergency video summit chaired by Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian late on Tuesday.

They stopped short of openly siding with Armenia and decided instead to send a 
fact-finding mission to the South Caucasus state.

Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, clarified that 
Yerevan sought the CSTO’s “military and military-political assistance” that 
would help it drive Azerbaijani forces out of its territory.

“That was our demand to the CSTO,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Up 
until now it has not been fulfilled. So in this regard, [the CSTO response] 
cannot satisfy us.”

Asked whether Yerevan asked Russia and the other CSTO member states to send 
troops to Armenia, he said: “The international community has many instruments, 
from military-political to diplomatic and economic ones.”

The official also would not be drawn on growing domestic calls for Armenia to 
leave the Russian-led bloc. “It’s the CSTO, not Armenia, that should think about 
that,” he said.

Moscow scrambled to end the deadly fighting, with various Russian officials 
holding urgent phone talks with their Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts. The 
United States and the European Union also engaged in a flurry of diplomatic 
activity aimed at halting the hostilities that left at least 135 Armenian and 77 
Azerbaijani soldiers dead.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Friday that most key foreign powers 
have voiced support for Armenia’s territory and held Azerbaijani responsible for 
the worst fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone since the 2020 war.

“But I must also admit that we had a bit higher expectations from some countries 
or a country, and it’s no secret that in some cases those expectations were not 
quite met,” Mirzoyan told a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan. He did not 
elaborate.



Armenia Warns Of ‘Another Azeri Offensive’

        • Heghine Buniatian

US - A Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, 
August 11, 2022.


Armenia accused Azerbaijan of planning another, more large-scale attack on its 
territory on Thursday during an emergency session of the UN Security Council 
which discussed this week’s fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

The fighting broke out on Monday night and practically stopped two days later 
after a ceasefire agreed by the two sides.

During separate phone calls with Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and 
Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said that although the 
ceasefire is largely holding, the situation at the border remains “very tense.”

“We are receiving reports that the fragile ceasefire is under threat,” the 
Armenian ambassador to the UN, Mher Margarian, told the Security Council meeting.

“There are credible reports that Azerbaijan is planning yet another military 
offensive by widening the geography of the aggression, including from the 
direction of Nakhichevan, to realize the unlawful ambitions towards establishing 
an extraterritorial corridor through the sovereign territory of Armenia,” he 
said.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan claimed on Wednesday that opening of 
such a corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave is one of the 
key aims of the Azerbaijani “aggression.” He reiterated that Yerevan can only 
agree to conventional transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

UN- Mher Margarian, Armenia's ambassador to UN, addresses UN Security Council, 
New York, .

The corridor sought by Baku would pass through Syunik, the only Armenian 
province bordering Iran. Iranian leaders regularly voice strong opposition to 
its creation, fearing a loss of the common border with Armenia,

Speaking with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on Wednesday, Iranian 
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reportedly stressed that “Iran’s 
border with Armenia is a historical route that must be preserved without any 
change.”

During the Security Council meeting, the U.S., Russian and French diplomats 
called on Armenian and Azerbaijani troops to pull back to border positions 
occupied by them before the outbreak of such hostilities.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzya said Moscow is making major efforts to 
ensure such troop disengagement and cement the shaky ceasefire.

“Like others, the United States welcomes the cessation of all hostilities and 
encourages both parties to continue to exercise restraint,” said U.S. Ambassador 
Richard Mills. “Military forces should disengage to allow both parties to 
resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations.”

For his part, France’s Nicolas de Riviere urged Azerbaijan to “pull back troops 
to initial positions.” “The territorial integrity of Armenia must be preserved,” 
he said.

Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the UN, Yashar Aliyev, rejected the Armenian 
accusations and blamed Yerevan for the escalation.


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