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    Categories: 2023

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 06/14/2023

                                        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
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