Wednesday, Erdogan Praises Pashinian, Chides Iran Turkey - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands with the new cabinet members during the inauguration ceremony at the presidential complex in Ankara, June 3, 2023. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday praised Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for attending his inauguration ceremony in Ankara and criticized Iran for strongly opposing a “corridor” that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Armenia. “Pashinian’s acceptance of our invitation was an important step,” Erdogan was reported to tell journalists after wrapping up his latest visit to Baku. “Mr. Pashinian attended our ceremony, overcoming many obstacles emanating from his country’s opposition.” Armenian opposition leaders condemned Pashinian’s presence at the inauguration ceremony held after Erdogan’s reelection and accused him of humiliating Armenia. They argue that Ankara continues to fully support Azerbaijan and make the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on Yerevan meeting Baku’s key demands. One of those demands is the opening of an exterritorial corridor passing through Armenia’s Syunik province, which also borders Iran. Tehran is strongly opposed to the corridor, having repeatedly warned against attempts to strip the Islamic Republic of the common border and transport links with Armenia. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emphasized this stance when he met with Erdogan in Tehran last July. “Iran’s approach to this issue disappoints us and Azerbaijan,” Erdogan said on Wednesday. “I want us to overcome that problem soon.” The Turkish leader claimed that unlike Tehran, Yerevan does not object to the idea of the “Zangezur corridor” which he discussed with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during his trip to Baku. Pashinian’s government regularly rejects Azerbaijani demands for such a corridor and says it can only agree to conventional transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has specifically made clear that Azerbaijani citizens and cargo passing through Syunik cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls. Pashinian and Aliyev openly argued about the matter during a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit in Moscow on May 25. Nevertheless, the deputy prime ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan as well as Russia reportedly made major progress on practical modalities of a rail link between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan during a subsequent meeting held in the Russian capital. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk met with Pashinian and his Armenian opposite number, Mher Grigorian, in Yerevan on Wednesday for further discussions on the thorny issue. An Armenian government statement said they concentrated on the “restoration of railway communication” and “border and customs controls based on the sovereignty and equal jurisdiction of the parties.” It did not elaborate. Probe Into Former Karabakh Army Chief Suspended • Naira Bulghadarian Nagorno-Karabakh - General Jalal Harutiunian (left) oversees a military exercise. An Armenian law-enforcement agency has suspended its criminal investigation into a former commander of Nagorno-Karabakh’s army prosecuted for serious military setbacks suffered during the 2020 war with Azerbaijan. The Investigative Committee indicted Lieutenant-General Jalal Harutiunian last September on two counts of “careless attitude towards military service” One of the accusations stems from an Armenian counteroffensive against advancing Azerbaijani forces launched on October 7, 2020 ten days after the outbreak of large-scale fighting. Its apparent failure facilitated Azerbaijan’s subsequent victory in the six-week war. The Investigative Committee said Harutiunian ordered two army units to launch an attack southeast of Karabakh despite lacking intelligence and the fact that they were outnumbered by the enemy and had no air cover. It also blamed the general for poor coordination between the units which it said also contributed to the failure of the operation. In addition, he was charged over the capture by Azerbaijani troops of the frontline positions of a Karabakh Armenian artillery unit on October 12, 2020. The 48-year-old general, who was seriously wounded in an Azerbaijani missile strike on October 26, 2020, denies the accusations carrying between four and eight years in prison. He was not arrested pending investigation, unlike his successor Mikael Arzumanian, who is facing separate charges in Armenia stemming from the disastrous war. The Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday that it has “temporarily” suspended the probe in order not to exceed a legal time limit set for pre-trial investigations. It said it has asked a team of unnamed military experts to pass judgment on Harutiunian’s wartime actions. Their findings are thus expected to determine whether he will go on trial or be cleared of the accusations. Harutiunian’s lawyer, Arsen Sardarian, said on Wednesday that the investigators made the decision because they have trouble substantiating the charges. He claimed that the counteroffensive in question was not necessarily a failure because the Karabakh and Armenian forces killed some 300 Azerbaijani soldiers and suffered only 20 casualties. Sardarian also argued that the counteroffensive was authorized by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and the then chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff, Lieutenant-General Onik Gasparian. He said that if his client is indeed guilty of mishandling that operation then so are Pashinian and Gasparian as well. Pashinian has denied Armenian opposition allegations that he is the one who ordered the operation in October 2020. He has blamed Armenia’s former leaders for the outcome of the 2020 war. Opposition leaders maintain that Pashinian is primarily to blame for Armenia’s defeat in the war which left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead. They claim that he ordered the criminal charges against Harutiunian, Arzumanian and other senior military officers to try to dodge responsibility. U.S. Downplays Cancellation Of Armenian-Azeri Talks U.S. - The State Department building in Washington, January 26, 2017. The United States has insisted that an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord is “within reach” while again warning American citizens in Armenia to “avoid travel near the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.” The U.S. State Department also downplayed the cancellation of a new round of negotiations which the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers were due to start in Washington on Monday. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said last week that the talks were postponed “at the request of the Azerbaijani side.” Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian on Tuesday linked the delay to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest visit to Baku. The State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said, however, that it was “100 percent due to scheduling issues.” He said Washington hopes to reschedule the talks “as soon as we can” but declined to speculate about possible dates. “We look forward to hosting another round of talks in Washington as the parties continue to pursue a peaceful dialogue for the South Caucasus region … We believe an agreement is within reach,” Miller told a daily news briefing. U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Arlington, May 4, 2023. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov reported major progress towards an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty after holding four-day talks outside Washington last month. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met together with European Union chief Charles Michel later in May. They held two more meetings in the following weeks and are due to meet again in July. The two sides say that despite Pashinian’s pledge to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh through the peace treaty, they still disagree on other sticking points. Tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and “the line of contact” around Karabakh have steadily increased over the last few weeks, with the sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire on a virtually daily basis. Armenian officials and pundits claim that Baku is ratcheting up the tensions in a bid to clinch more Armenian concessions. Armenia - U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Kristina Kvien visits Syunik province, June 8, 2023. “U.S. citizens should continue to exercise caution near all international borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan and avoid travel near the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone and line of contact,” the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan said in a “security alert” posted on its website late on Tuesday. The embassy also said that American diplomats and their families are still “prohibited from any non-essential travel” to areas close to the Azerbaijani border. It listed Armenia’s entire Syunik province and the resort town of Jermuk among those locations. U.S. Ambassador Kristina Kvien visited Syunik last week. Kvien said she “saw first hand the tense situation along the border” and “heard about pervasive security concerns from local officials, civil society.” Another Armenian Plant Hit By Cross-Border Fire • Artak Khulian • Ruzanna Stepanian Armenia - A road sign at the entrance to the border village of Yeraskh, July 20, 2021. (Photo by Armenia's Office of the Human Rights Defender) Two workers building a new metallurgical plant in an Armenian border village were seriously wounded on Wednesday in what the Armenian military described as cross-border fire from nearby Azerbaijani army positions. The workers, identified by the Defense Ministry in Yerevan as Indian nationals Muhammad Asif and Mirhasan Sahajan, were reportedly hospitalized as a result. The ministry accused Azerbaijani forces of firing at its border posts as well as the construction site in the village of Yeraskh for the second consecutive day. It released a photograph of a civilian vehicle in the village bordering Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave riddled with bullet holes. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that its troops returned fire after being targeted by the Armenian side. Several Yeraskh residents interviewed by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service confirmed that the under-construction plant repeatedly came under fire. RFE/RL reporters were not allowed to approach the site for security reasons. The Armenian Foreign Ministry issued a statement following the first truce violation reported from Yeraskh late on Tuesday. It said Baku is demonstrating “overt disregard for Armenia’s internationally recognized borders” and underlining its desire to “impose solutions on Armenia through the illegal use of force.” “Either we negotiate in good faith to find mutually acceptable solutions, or, if there is a use of force, then such a policy is unacceptable to us and, we hope, the international community as well,” Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told the Armenian parliament on Wednesday. For his part, Defense Minister Suren Papikian said Armenia is not planning any “aggressive actions” against Azerbaijan and will continue to advance its “peace agenda” despite the Azerbaijani attacks. Papikian also assured lawmakers that the Armenian armed forces will defend “our country’s sovereign territory.” The truce violations came one week after the Azerbaijani government protested against the construction of the Yeraskh plant located just 800 meters from the Nakhichevan border. It claimed that building the industrial facility without Baku’s permission is a violation of international environmental norms. Yerevan brushed aside that claim. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Baku’s “false concerns” are a smokescreen for impeding economic growth and foreign investment in Armenia. Armenia’s largest gold mine also located on the border with Azerbaijan was likewise targeted by systematic Azerbaijani gunfire this spring. The Russian owner of the Sotk gold mine announced last week that it has no choice but to end open-pit mining operations there and put many of its 700 workers on unpaid leave. Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.