Thursday, 


More Progress Reported In Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Talks


U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Armenian Foreign Minister 
Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minoster Jeyhun Bayramov, Washington, 
June 27, 2023.


The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers made further progress towards a 
bilateral peace treaty but still disagree on some of its key terms, official 
Yerevan said on Thursday night after they concluded a new round of U.S.-mediated 
negotiations.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov 
met outside Washington for three consecutive days. They also held trilateral 
meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security 
Adviser Jake Sullivan.

“The Ministers and their teams continued progress on the draft bilateral 
‘Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations,’” read a 
statement released by the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

“They reached an agreement on additional articles and advanced mutual 
understanding of the draft agreement, meanwhile acknowledging that the positions 
on some key issues require further work,” it said, adding that Mirzoyan and 
Bayramov pledged to “continue their negotiations.”

The statement did not disclose those articles or the remaining sticking points. 
It reflected Blinken’s comments made during the final session of the three-day 
talks.

The top U.S. diplomat also said that “there remains hard work to be done to try 
to reach a final agreement.”

“I think there is also a clear understanding on everyone’s part that the closer 
you get to reaching agreement, in some cases the harder it gets by definition. 
The most difficult issues are left for the end,” added Blinken.

The two sides were understood to disagree before the latest talks on practical 
modalities of delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and a dialogue between 
Baku and Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership as well as international safeguards 
against non-compliance with the treaty.

Yerevan has been pressing for an “international mechanism” for such a dialogue, 
saying that it is essential for protecting “the rights and security” of 
Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population. Bayramov made clear late last week that 
Baku will not agree to any special security arrangements for the Karabakh 
Armenians.




Minister Confident About Grape Purchases By Armenian Brandy Giant

        • Robert Zargarian

Armenia -- A truckload of grapes is transported to a storage facility in Ararat 
region run by the Yerevan Brandy Company, 14Sep2010


Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said on Thursday that Armenia’s leading brandy 
producer will not cut back on purchases of grapes from domestic farmers this 
year despite the uncertain future of its vital exports to Russia.

The French group Pernod Ricard, which owns the Yerevan Brandy Company (YBC), 
announced in May that all of its subsidiaries around the world will stop 
exporting alcoholic beverages to Russia.

The move linked to Western sanctions against Moscow raised serious concerns in 
Armenia about the YBC’s continued operations. The bulk of its brandy, famous 
across the former Soviet Union, is sold in Russia. More importantly, the company 
has long been Armenia’s largest wholesale buyer of grapes grown by tens of 
thousands of farmers.

“[YBC] will not reduce the volume of its purchases compared with the previous 
years,” Kerobian told journalists. “This was our main concern and it has been 
dispelled.”

The YBC management has made no statements to that effect, however. It also 
remains reluctant to officially comment on the future of its exports to Russia. 
Russian and Armenian media outlets quoted unnamed company sources as saying 
after the Pernod Ricard announcement that the YBC is continuing brandy shipments 
to the Russian market.

Armenia - A vineyard in Armavir province, October 10, 2022.

Other Armenian brandy makers look set to buy fewer grapes this year. They 
already cut their purchases in 2022, sparking protests by hundreds of angry 
winegrowers unable to sell their main crop.

“The situation is already uncertain,” Arsen Simonian, a farmer from the 
wine-growing Ararat province, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Simonian, who owns a large vineyard in the village of Verin Artashat and heads a 
provincial association of winegrowers, said that about one-fifth of the local 
farmers have already decided to cut down their vineyards and possibly switch to 
other crops.

“We do not expect that the entire [2023] grape harvest will be bought,” Kerobian 
acknowledged earlier this month. “We are now trying to figure out methods for 
making the two ends meet.”

The minister said on Thursday that the Armenian government will impose stricter 
quality controls and other regulations on local brandy firms.

“Control of the quality of brandy will definitely lead to a large volume of 
[grape] purchases,” he said.

Simonian agreed that such oversight could greatly benefit grape farmers. But he 
questioned the government’s ability to enforce it properly.




U.S. Sanctions Official Visits Armenia


Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets James O'Brien, head of the U.S. 
Department of State's Sanctions Coordination Office, Yerevan, .


A senior U.S. official met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday for 
talks that were expected to focus on Armenia’s compliance with Western sanctions 
imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. Embassy in Armenia said earlier in the day that James O’Brien, the 
sanctions coordinator at the State Department, has arrived in Yerevan to discuss 
with Pashinian and other Armenian officials “cooperation on U.S. sanctions” and 
“express appreciation for Armenia’s continued commitment to upholding U.S. 
sanctions.”

An Armenian government statement on Pashinian’s talks with O’Brien did not 
mention the issue. It said the two men spoke about the Nagorno-Karabakh 
conflict, Turkish-Armenian relations and “various issues of mutual interest.”

O’Brien arrived in the Armenian capital from Tbilisi where he held similar talks 
with Georgian leaders earlier this week.

U.S. officials pressed the Armenian government to prevent Russia from evading 
the sanctions through Armenian companies during a series of meetings held this 
spring. Pashinian said on May 22 that despite its “strategic” relations with 
Russia Armenia “cannot afford to be placed under Western sanctions.”

A few days later, Pashinian’s government announced that Armenian exporters will 
now need government permission to deliver microchips, transformers, video 
cameras, antennas and other electronic equipment to Russia. The Armenian 
Ministry of Economy, which proposed the measure, cited the need to prevent the 
use of such items by foreign defense industries.

The Armenian Central Bank essentially confirmed on June 7 reports that local 
commercial banks have frequently blocked payments for such supplies wired by 
Russian buyers in the past few weeks.

According to government data, Armenia’s exports to Russia almost tripled in 2022 
and nearly quadrupled in January-April 2023. Goods manufactured in third 
countries and re-exported by Armenian firms are believed to have accounted for 
most of that gain. They include consumer electronics and other hi-tech goods and 
components which the Western powers believe could be used by the Russian defense 
industry.

The increased trade with and other cash flows from Russia are the main reason 
why the Armenian economy grew by 12 percent in 2022.




Yerevan To Continue Talks With Baku After Deadly ‘Provocation’

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

U.S. - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat 
Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov start a new round of 
talks in Arlington, Virginia, June 27, 2023.


Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday effectively dismissed 
Nagorno-Karabakh leaders’ call to halt Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks made 
after four Karabakh soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani forces early on 
Wednesday.

In a statement adopted later on Wednesday, the Karabakh parliament said Yerevan 
must refuse to negotiate until Baku ends truce violations along the Karabakh 
“line of contact” and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. It warned that failure to 
do so “would mean the encouragement of the Azerbaijani side’s aggressive 
behavior.”

Pashinian said that the soldiers’ deaths were the result of Baku’s pre-planned 
“military provocation” aimed at undermining his administration’s “efforts to 
establish peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and address the issue of the 
Nagorno-Karabakh people’s rights and security.” He noted in this regard that the 
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers are continuing their latest round of 
U.S.-mediated negotiations that began outside Washington on Tuesday.

“There is no alternative to peace in our region, and our government, faced with 
all difficulties and complications, will continue the political path of peace,” 
Pashinian added at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.

A U.S. State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said late on Wednesday that 
there is “no change in the schedule” of the Washington talks that are due to be 
wrapped up on Thursday evening.

“We are deeply disturbed by the loss of life in Nagorno-Karabakh, and we offer 
our condolences to the families of all of those who were killed,” Patel told 
reporters. “These latest incidents underscore the need to refrain from 
hostilities and for a durable and dignified peace.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani 
counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov held a trilateral meeting with Jake Sullivan, the 
U.S. national security adviser, at the White House. Sullivan said he urged Baku 
and Yerevan to “continue making progress toward peace, as well as to avoid 
provocations and de-escalate tensions in order to build confidence.”

According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Mirzoyan told Sullivan that 
Azerbaijani artillery and drone attacks that left the four Karabakh soldiers 
dead are part of continuing Azerbaijani efforts to “subject Nagorno-Karabakh to 
ethnic cleansing.” Pashinian likewise accused Baku of pursuing a “consistent 
policy” of depopulating the Armenian-populated region.

Pashinian drew strong condemnation from the Karabakh leaders and the Armenian 
opposition after he pledged in May to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over 
Karabakh through an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty discussed during the 
ongoing peace talks. His critics maintain that the Karabakh Armenians cannot 
live safely under Azerbaijani rule and would inevitably leave their homeland in 
that case.


Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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