RFE/RL Armenian Service – 06/30/2023

                                        Friday, 


Karabakh Leader Rules Out ‘Integration’ Into Azerbaijan

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Nagorno Karabakh - President Arayik Harutiunian holds a meeting in Stepanakert, 
June 26, 2023.


Nagorno-Karabakh’s president said on Thursday that the Armenian-populated region 
will continue to assert its right to self-determination despite mounting 
pressure from Azerbaijan.

“As for Armenia or various international bodies, I want to make clear that 
nobody can strip us of our right to self-determination, an international norm,” 
Arayik Harutiunian told Karabakh lawmakers.

Harutiunian said that Azerbaijan is heightening tensions along the Karabakh 
“line of contact” and using its nearly eight-month blockade of the Lachin 
corridor to force the Karabakh Armenians to disband their government bodies and 
armed forces and accept Azerbaijani rule.

“The objective is [to ensure] an Artsakh delegation’s visit to Baku,” he said. 
“They are doing everything for that. Baku is discussing only one topic with us: 
the topic of integration. It’s not discussing any other topics.”

Azerbaijan’s leaders have openly threatened to launch a new military attack on 
Karabakh in recent weeks.

“That is why the [Karabakh] parliament must be dissolved, the element who calls 
himself the president [of Karabakh] must surrender and all ministers, deputies 
and other officials must resign. Only then can there be talk of amnesty,” 
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in late May.

Two weeks later, Baku completely blocked relief supplies to Karabakh carried out 
by Russian peacekeepers. It thus aggravated shortages of food, medicine and 
other essential items there.

Aliyev’s threats and the tightening of the blockade followed Armenian Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s pledge to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over 
Karabakh. The authorities in Stepanakert strongly condemned Pashinian, saying 
that his statement is “null and void” for them.

Pashinian’s government wants Baku and Stepanakert to address “the rights and 
security” of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population through an internationally 
mediated dialogue. Its critics say the Karabakh Armenians cannot live safely 
under Azerbaijani rule and would inevitably leave their homeland in that case.




Armenian Government Raises Pensions


Armenia - The main government building in Yerevan, March 6, 2021.


The Armenian government has raised the country’s modest pensions by roughly 7 
percent amid continuing double-digit economic growth.

It also approved on Thursday similar increases in disability benefits. They too 
will take effect on July 1.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, Labor and Social Affairs Minister 
Narek Mkrtchian said the average monthly pension in Armenia will reach about 
50,000 drams ($128). Retired military personnel will now be paid 91,600 drams 
per month, he said. The government raised the minimum pension by almost 14 
percent, to 36,000 drams.

These figures will pale in comparison with the country’s average monthly wage, 
which currently stands at about 256,000 drams ($656), according to government 
data. The average pension will also remain well below the per-capita minimum 
cost of living.

The so-called “consumer basket” calculated by the Armenian Statistical Committee 
is now worth just over 80,000 drams. Mkrtchian said that the government remains 
committed to gradually bringing the average pension to this level in the coming 
years.

The pension rises were clearly made possible by Armenia’s robust economic growth 
that exceeded 12 percent in 2022 and seems to be continuing unabated now. They 
will not be enough to offset nearly 9 percent consumer price inflation recorded 
last year. According to the Statistical Committee, inflation fell to just 1.3 
percent in May this year.




Yerevan Details Lingering Differences With Baku

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - The Armenian Foreign Ministry building in Yerevan.


Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to disagree on practical modalities of 
delimiting their border and organizing a dialogue between Baku and 
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The foreign ministers of the two countries concluded late on Thursday a new 
round of U.S.-mediated negotiations held in and outside Washington. The Foreign 
Ministry said they agreed on more articles of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace 
treaty but did not iron out their differences on “some key issues.”

The ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that 
those issues include the border delimitation, troop disengagement and how to 
“properly address the rights and security of the Nagorno-Karabakh people under 
an international mechanism.”

Yerevan says that such a mechanism is essential for protecting Karabakh’s ethnic 
Armenian population. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov made clear 
late last week that Baku will not agree to any special security arrangements for 
the Karabakh Armenians.

Also, the Armenian side wants to use 1975 Soviet maps as a basis for delimiting 
the long border. Baku has opposed the idea so far. The Azerbaijani Foreign 
Ministry emphasized earlier this month that Azerbaijan has demarcated its 
borders with other neighboring states “on the basis of analyses and examination 
of legally binding documents, rather than any specially chosen map.”

Tigran Grigorian, a Yerevan-based political analyst, said the parties’ failure 
to eliminate any of these sticking points means that they did not achieve a 
breakthrough during the three-day talks. The signing of the peace treaty is 
therefore still not on the cards, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

Speaking during the concluding session of the talks, U.S. Secretary of State 
Antony Blinken said that despite “further progress” made by the two conflicting 
sides “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,” 
added Blinken.

One day after the start of the talks, four Karabakh Armenian soldiers were 
killed in Azerbaijani artillery and drone attacks on their positions, one of the 
deadliest ceasefire violations in Karabakh reported since the 2020 war.

“I think that Azerbaijan definitely used that escalation to try clinch some 
concessions from the Armenian side at the negotiating table,” said Grigorian. He 
claimed that Baku is seeking an agreement that would amount to Armenia’s “de 
facto capitulation.”




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.


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