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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