Tuesday,
Greece Voices Solidarity With Armenia
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (right) and his Greek
counterpart Nikos Dendias hold a joint news briefing in Yerevan, September 27,
2022.
Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias condemned Azerbaijan’s recent military
operations at the border with Armenia and also blamed Turkey for the dramatic
escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict as he visited Yerevan on Tuesday.
“We Greece have repeatedly underlined that we support the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of all states,” Dendias said after talks with his Armenian
counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan. “That goes also for our dear friends, the
Armenians, Armenia.”
“We believe in the inviolability of borders, and I am referring to the incidents
that happened just a few days ago following the shelling of Armenian territory,
including inhabited areas, by the Azeri military forces,” he told a joint news
briefing. “And I would like to quote [French] President Macron who said
yesterday: ‘I strongly condemn what happened in recent days and call for peace
and resumption of negotiations.’ So I am here to express our solidarity with the
Armenian government and the Armenian people.”
Dendias went on to denounce attempts to “redraw maps,” pointing the finger at
not only Azerbaijan but also its key ally, Turkey.
“Turkey is trying to take advantage of the recent turmoil in order to undermine
peace and stability, be it in the Caucasus or the Aegean,” he charged, pointing
to Ankara’s “threat of war against Greece” voiced in an intensifying dispute
over Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
Mirzoyan thanked Athens for its position on the border clashes of September
13-14 which Yerevan regards as Azerbaijani military aggression.
Predictably, Ankara has voiced full support for Baku after what was the worst
fighting in the conflict zone since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Dendias flew to Yerevan just over a week after he, Mirzoyan and Foreign Minister
Ioannis Kasoulides of Cyprus held a trilateral meeting in New York on the
sidelines of an annual session of the UN General Assembly. The three nations
share historically strained relations with Turkey.
“We are looking forward to enhancing our trilateral partnership with Cyprus to a
new level,” said Dendias, who held separate meetings with Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian and Defense Minister Suren Papikian later on Tuesday.
The Greek minister’s trip coincided with the second anniversary of the outbreak
of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. He had previously visited Armenia during
the six-week hostilities.
Armenian Leaders Cancel Key Ceremony On Karabakh War Anniversary
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia - Women visit one of the graves of Armenian soldiers killed in the 2020
war in Nagorno-Karabakh and buried in the Yerablur Military Pantheon in Yerevan,
January 28, 2022.
Avoiding another confrontation with angry parents of fallen soldiers, Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior officials did not visit Armenia’s main
military cemetery on Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of the devastating
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The war broke out early on September 27, 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a
large-scale military offensive along the Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact”
around Karabakh. The Azerbaijani army captured four districts south of the
Armenian-populated disputed territory as well as Karabakh’s southern Hadrut
district and the town of Shushi (Shusha) before a Russian-brokered ceasefire
stopped the hostilities on November 10.
Baku also regained control in the following weeks over the three other districts
occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces in the early 1990s. The truce accord
negotiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin also led to the deployment of
2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh.
According to the Armenian authorities, 3,825 Armenian soldiers and 80 civilians
were killed during the six-week war. At least 203 other servicemen remain
unaccounted for.
Nagorno-Karabakh - An Armenian soldier fires an artillery piece on the
frontline, October 5, 2020.
Early in the morning, the parents of several dozen soldiers killed in action
gathered at the Yerablur Military Pantheon in Yerevan to try to prevent
Pashinian from laying flowers there as part of planned official ceremonies to
mark the war anniversary. They hold him responsible for the deaths of their sons.
The same protesters tried unsuccessfully to disrupt a wreath-laying ceremony led
by Pashinian there on Armenia’s Independence Day marked on September 21. Riot
police broke up the protest and detained dozens of its participants, causing
uproar from opposition and civic groups.
Pashinian, members of his government and political team as well as President
Vahagn Khachaturian decided not to visit Yerablur this time around. According to
pro-government media, they did not want to cause further tension at the cemetery
where hundreds of Armenian victims of the 2020 war were laid to rest.
Armenia - Police detain the mother of an Armenian soldier killed in the 2020 war
in Nagorno-Karabakh at the Yerablur Military Pantheon, Yerevan, September 21,
2022.
“Today, we once again bow our heads and commemorate the fallen warriors of the
44-day war, who fought to stop the existential threat facing our compatriots,”
the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on the occasion.
The ministry said the six-week war demonstrated “Azerbaijan's state policy of
ethnic cleansing of Armenians of Artsakh.”
“Even today, through the use of force and the threat of use of force, Azerbaijan
attempts to realize its maximalist aspirations, rejecting the very fact of
Nagorno-Karabakh’s existence as a territorial unit and the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict,” it said.
The war anniversary was also marked in Azerbaijan whose government has
acknowledged over 2,900 combat and civilian deaths. The country observed a
minute of silence in memory of its war dead.
Ter-Petrosian Wants Dialogue Between Armenian Government, Opposition
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian at a press conference in Yerevan,
June 10, 2021.
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian has called on Armenia’s government and
leading opposition groups to reach a consensus on how to make peace with
Azerbaijan and Turkey.
In a televised interview aired late on Monday, Ter-Petrosian said the Armenian
opposition should help Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accept “painful solutions”
backed by the international community.
“All solutions will be bad for us,” he told Armenian Public Television. “I
believe the challenge is to choose the least painful of those solutions.”
“Pashinian is also afraid of signing such a document,” he went on. “Whatever
document he signs they will brand him a traitor, a Turk or I don’t know what. In
my view, we will give Pashinian a helping hand if we choose the least painful
variant. We will thereby shoulder responsibility for that variant.”
Ter-Petrosian claimed that Armenia will have to make even greater concessions if
it rejects such a settlement now. He said at the same time that he does not know
the exact terms of peace accords currently offered by Azerbaijan or major
foreign powers. Only Pashinian and some members of his inner circle possess such
information, he said.
The remarks came almost a week after Ter-Petrosian and two other former
presidents, Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian, met to discuss grave security
challenges facing Armenia. The meeting was hosted by Catholicos Garegin II, the
supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, at his headquarters in
Echmiadzin. No concrete agreements were apparently reached by them.
Armenia - Opposition supporters demonstrate in Yerevan, June 14, 2022.
Kocharian and Sarkisian lead the two opposition groups represented in the
Armenian parliament. They staged virtually daily street protests in Yerevan in
May and June after Pashinian signaled readiness to make major concessions to
Azerbaijan.
“No [national] unity can be formed with the participation of Nikol Pashinian,”
Armen Ashotian, a senior member of Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK), said on
Monday night, commenting on Ter-Petrosian’s remarks.
Ashotian warned that because of his “tough personal position or unbridled
ambition” Ter-Petrosian risks dashing hopes raised by the rare dialogue of the
three ex-presidents. The latter have long had uneasy relations with each other.
There was no immediate official reaction from Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance.
Still, some of its parliamentarians rejected what they see as a defeatist agenda
promoted by Ter-Petrosian.
“What Levon Ter-Petrosian is saying is ‘forget about Karabakh’ and ‘we
capitulated, so let’s accept everything that the enemy wants,’” one of those
lawmakers, Gegham Manukian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday.
“Ter-Petrosian voiced no calls for public consolidation, self-organization and
resistance.”
Manukian claimed that Ter-Petrosian’s chief preoccupation now is to “save Nikol”
through the proposed dialogue.
Meanwhile, a senior lawmaker representing Pashinian’s Civil Contract party,
Artur Hovannisian, hit out at the parliamentary opposition forces, saying that
they have “served the interests of other countries.” He did not name those
countries.
Hovannisian at the same time said: “I hope that the meetings of the former
presidents and the Catholicos will be beneficial for our country.”
Hayastan and the HHK demanded a parliamentary vote of no confidence in Pashinian
after he sparked on September 14 a spontaneous antigovernment demonstration in
Yerevan on the second day of deadly border clashes between Armenian and
Azerbaijani forces.
Speaking in the parliament, the prime minister expressed readiness to sign an
unpopular peace treaty with Azerbaijan “as a result of which many people will
criticize, curse and declare us traitors.” He said he is ready to recognize
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity through such a treaty if Baku withdraws its
troops from Armenian border regions occupied by it.
Pashinian’s statement fueled rumors that Yerevan will unconditionally accept
Baku’s terms of the treaty, including recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty
over Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of angry people rallied outside the parliament
building in Yerevan to demand Pashinian’s removal from power.
U.S. Insists On Azerbaijani Troop Withdrawal
U.S. -- U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price speaks during a press briefing
at the State Department in Washington, February 8, 2021
The United States has publicly urged Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from the
territory seized by them during border clashes with Armenian forces earlier this
month.
“Our message has been consistent for some time,” Ned Price, the U.S. State
Department spokesman, said on Monday. “We call on Azerbaijan to return troops to
their initial positions. We urge disengagement of military forces and work to
resolve all outstanding issues between Armenia and Azerbaijan through peaceful
negotiations.”
“The use of force is not an acceptable path,” Price told a daily news briefing
in Washington. “We’ve made that clear privately. We’ve also made that clear
publicly, and we’re glad that our continued engagement, including at high
levels, including last week in New York, with both countries has helped to halt
the hostilities.”
Price referred to the meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York on
September 19. No concrete agreements were announced after the talks held on the
sidelines of an annual session of the UN General Assembly.
Blinken reportedly urged the two ministers to meet again before the end of
September. Price would not say whether such a meeting will take place in the
coming days.
He also declined to shed light on other Armenian and Azerbaijani officials’
ongoing visits to Washington. A senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried earlier on
Monday.
“We are in regular contact with both Armenian and Azeri officials,” said Price.
“That will continue.”
The conflicting sides blame each other for the September 13-14 fighting that
left at least 280 soldiers dead. Azerbaijani troops reportedly attacked and
seized some of the Armenian army positions along the long border between the two
states. Blinken urged Aliyev to “cease hostilities” when they spoke by phone
during what was the worst escalation of the conflict since the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday likewise called for the Azerbaijani
troop withdrawal. Meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Paris, Macron
said Baku should also stop using or threatening to use force to resolve the
conflict with Armenia.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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