Thursday,
Armenia Building Checkpoint On Turkish Border
• Nane Sahakian
Turkey/Armenia - An Armenian truck loaded with humanitarian aid for earthquake
victims crosses a Turkish-Armenian border bridge near Margara, February 11, 2023.
Armenia is building a checkpoint at its closed border with Turkey despite what
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan has described as a “pause” in efforts to
normalize Turkish-Armenian relations.
The Armenian government contracted recently a private company to construct the
checkpoint in Margara, a border village 40 kilometers southwest of Yerevan, in
preparation for a planned opening of the Turkish-Armenian border for diplomatic
passport holders and citizens of third countries.
Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement to that effect in July last year
following a series of negotiations held by their special envoys. The Armenian
negotiator, parliament vice-speaker Ruben Rubinian, said earlier this year that
it is due be implemented “at the beginning of this summer.”
However, the Turkish government gave no such indications even after Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s June 28 phone call with Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan. The issue was reportedly on the agenda of the call.
“We have had a certain pause in this process, which I think was due to the
[presidential] election campaign and the elections in Turkey,” Mirzoyan said
during a visit to Austria on Tuesday. “Now it’s time to continue the
normalization talks.”
Armenia- A view of the ruins of a medieval Armenian bridge over Akhurian river
marking the Turkish-Armenian border, May 10, 2023.
Erdogan and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly made clear that further
progress in the normalization process is contingent on the signing of an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord sought by Baku.
The head of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee, Rustam Badasian, said on Thursday
that work on the Margara checkpoint is in full swing and will be complete
“soon.” “I can't give a specific date,” he told reporters.
Badasian, whose agency comprises the national customs service, did not comment
on prospects for the functioning of the Margara facility.
Another interim agreement reached by Rubinian and his Turkish opposite number,
Serdar Kilic, called for air freight traffic between the two neighboring
nations. There have been no signs of its implementation either, even though the
Turkish government officially allowed cargo shipments by air to and from Armenia
in January.
In the words of Gagik Musheghian, an Armenian businessman who splits his time
between Yerevan and Istanbul, such shipments are possible only “on paper.” He
said that as recently as on Monday he inquired about Turkish customs clearance
for airlifting a consignment of goods to Armenia.
“They said … it’s not possible to do as a normal [commercial] shipment because
they don’t recognize Armenia,” Musheghian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Russia Responds To Turkey Over Karabakh Peacekeeping Mission
• Aza Babayan
LITHUANIA - Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a press conference
during the NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 12, 2023.
Turkey has no business deciding how long Russian peacekeepers should remain
stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, responded to Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, who said last week that the peacekeeping contingent must leave
Karabakh in 2025 in line with a Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 2020
Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
Under that agreement, the 2,000 or so Russian soldiers, deployed along the
current Karabakh “line of contact” and in the Lachin corridor right after the
six-week war, will stay there for at least five years. The peacekeeping
operation can be repeatedly extended by five more years if Armenia and
Azerbaijan do not object to that.
Speaking at the end of a NATO summit in Vilnius on July 12, Erdogan expressed
confidence that Moscow will honor the truce accord and the five-year timeline
set by it.
“Ankara is not a party to the statement of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan dated
November 9, 2020,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow.
“It was on the basis of this document that the Russian peacekeeping contingent
was deployed in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” she said. “And it is
in this document that both the terms of stay of the contingent and the
parameters of its possible extension for the next five-year period are laid out.”
Nagorno-Karabakh - Russian peacekeepers check their weapons at a checkpoint on
the road to Shushi, November 17, 2020.
Azerbaijan regularly emphasizes that the peacekeeping forces are deployed in the
conflict zone on a “temporary” basis. It has increasingly criticized them during
its seven-month blockade of the Lachin corridor condemned by Armenia and
Karabakh as a gross violation of the ceasefire.
Baku accused the peacekeepers of supporting “Armenian army units” in Karabakh
when it rejected on July 16 Moscow’s latest calls for an immediate end to the
blockade. A senior Russian diplomat strongly denied the claim.
The Russians have also been criticized by Armenia for their failure to ensure
unfettered traffic through Karabakh’s sole land link with the outside world
envisaged by the 2020 accord.
Zakharova again defended the peacekeepers, saying that they are playing a
“stabilizing role” in Karabakh. “Maintaining peace in the South Caucasus is in
the interests of both Azerbaijan and Armenia, and, I think, all countries of the
region, including Turkey,” she said.
Karabakh’s leadership regards the Russian military presence as the Armenian
populated region’s main security guarantee. Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh
president, expressed hope last September that it will be “indefinite.”
Pashinian Admits Lack Of Progress In Fresh Talks With Aliyev
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses prosecutors in Yerevan, July
1, 2023.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday that he and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev did not achieve “concrete results” at their latest
meeting hosted by European Union chief Charles Michel on July 15.
Pashinian said they discussed mutual recognition of Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity, delimitation of the border and transport links between
the two states as well as the deepening humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh
caused by Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor. He made no explicit
mention of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty, the main focus of peace talks
held by Baku and Yerevan in recent months.
“As you can see, I cannot present very concrete results from the Brussels
meeting,” Pashinian told his ministers during a weekly cabinet meeting.
“Nevertheless, the negotiation process should continue as intensively as
possible and active efforts should be made to find mutually acceptable
solutions.”
Speaking after the trilateral meeting, Michel gave no indications that Aliyev
and Pashinian narrowed their differences on the peace treaty. He said he urged
them to “take further courageous steps to ensure decisive and irreversible
progress on the normalization track.”
Pashinian said the meeting “did not yield any concrete results in terms of
opening the Lachin corridor and overcoming the humanitarian crisis in
Nagorno-Karabakh.” He again charged that “ethnic cleansing” is the ultimate aim
of the Azerbaijani blockade.
“At the moment, our task is to draw greater international attention to the
humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh through diplomatic methods and by
presenting the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in the international press and
social media as widely and objectively as possible,” he said.
Artur Khachatrian, an Armenian opposition lawmaker, dismissed the remarks. He
said Yerevan should portray the blockade as further proof that the Karabakh
Armenians cannot live safely under Azerbaijani rule.
“They [the Armenian government] don’t talk about that because they are scared,”
he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Echoing statements by other opposition leaders, Khachatrian claimed that the
blockade is the result of Pashinian’s decision to stop championing Karabakh’s
right to self-determination and to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the
Armenian populated region.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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