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    Categories: 2023

RFE/RL Armenian Service – 07/21/2023

                                        Friday, 


Armenian, Azeri FMs To Meet Again In Moscow


Tajikistan - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets his Armenian and 
Azerbaiani counterparts in Dushanbe, May 12, 2022.


The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan have accepted a Russian proposal 
to meet in Moscow soon following a series of negotiations mediated by the United 
States.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was the first to announce the upcoming 
meeting on Thursday. The Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmed it later in the 
day. Neither side gave a date for the talks.

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov 
most recently met outside Washington for four consecutive days late last month. 
They continued their discussions on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said afterwards that progress made by them is 
“not significant.” Pashinian’s July 15 talks with Aliyev held in Brussels also 
did not yield tangible results.

As European Union head Charles Michel hosted the latest Armenian-Azerbaijani 
summit Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed readiness to organize a 
fresh trilateral meeting with Bayramov and Mirzoyan. According to the Russian 
Foreign Ministry, they should discuss the peace treaty and try to lay the 
groundwork for its eventual signing at a “Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in 
Moscow.”

Russia has been very critical of U.S. and EU efforts to broker such a peace 
deal, saying that the main aim of the Western powers if to drive it out of the 
South Caucasus.

U.S. - Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets the Armenian and Azerbaijani 
foreign ministers in Washington, June 27, 2023.

Bayramov phoned Lavrov on Thursday to discuss what his press office described as 
“existing difficulties” in the peace process. According to a Russian readout of 
the call, they looked at “ways to intensify joint work on the key tracks of the 
Azerbaijani-Armenian normalization.” There was no word on the upcoming talks in 
Moscow.

In Yerevan, meanwhile, Pashinian and Mirzoyan met with Igor Khovayev, the 
Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. They discussed the deteriorating 
humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh caused by Azerbaijan’s seven-month 
blockade of the Lachin corridor.

In a June 15 statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry “strongly” urged Azerbaijan 
to lift the blockade, saying that it could have “the most dramatic consequences” 
for Karabakh’s population. Baku rejected the call.

The Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe 
discussed the severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel and other essential goods 
in Karabakh on Thursday at an emergency meeting in Vienna initiated by Armenia. 
Addressing the meeting, Mirzoyan said the Armenian-populated region is “on the 
verge of starvation” and called for stronger international pressure on Baku.

On Friday, the Karabakh parliament appealed to Armenia to ask the United Nations 
to give the Russian peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh an “international 
mandate.” It said the lack of such a mandate prevents them from unblocking the 
sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia and the outside world.

Pashinian suggested in December that Russia itself seek such a mandate or ask 
the UN Security Council to send an “additional, multinational peacekeeping force 
to Nagorno-Karabakh.” A senior Russian diplomat countered that the idea of a UN 
peacekeeping operation is “hardly realistic.”




Suspect Dies In Armenia After Interrogation

        • Nane Sahakian

Armenia -- The entrance to the main Investigative Committee building in Yerevan.


A man suspected of drug trafficking reportedly fell to his death after being 
interrogated by an Armenian law-enforcement agency on Thursday.

The Investigative Committee said that the 30-year-old Russian citizen was 
brought in for questioning at one of its divisions one day after police arrested 
him for receiving “parcels containing narcotics.”

It said that the handcuffed suspect was escorted out of an interrogation room 
located on the fifth floor and reached a “door leading to the elevator.”

“As soon as the door opened, he unexpectedly quickly approached an open window 
next to the elevator and jumped out of it, dying as a result,” the committee 
added in a late-night statement. It did not identify the suspect.

The statement stressed that the interrogation was filmed and attended by his 
lawyer. As of Friday afternoon, the still unknown lawyer did not publicly 
comment on what the investigators described as an “accident.”

Artur Sakunts, a human rights activist, decried the man’s death. He said the 
law-enforcement agency is “directly responsible” for it even if the official 
version of events is true.

It is not clear whether a criminal case was opened in connection with the deadly 
incident.

Human rights groups say that ill-treatment of criminal suspects remains 
widespread in Armenia despite sweeping law-enforcement reforms promised by Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government. Law-enforcement officers are still rarely 
prosecuted or fired for such offenses.

As recently as on June 22, a man in Yerevan claimed that the Investigative 
Committee chief, Argishti Kyaramian, personally tortured and threatened to kill 
him following his arrest on June 17. A spokesman for Kyaramian denied the 
allegations.




Russia Again Warns Armenia Over International Court Treaty


Russia - Federation Council vice-speaker Yury Vorobyov (second from left) speaks 
during a meeting of Armenian and Russian lawmakers in Irkutsk, .


Russia again warned Armenia on Friday against ratifying the founding treaty of 
the International Criminal Court (ICC) that issued an arrest warrant for Russian 
President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

Yury Vorobyov, a deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, brought 
up the issue during a meeting of Armenian and Russian lawmakers held in the 
Siberian city of Irkutsk. He referred to the Armenian Constitutional Court’s 
decision in March to give the green light for parliamentary ratification of the 
treaty, also known as the Rome Statute.

“While we proceed from the assumption that this step by our Armenian partners 
does not have an anti-Russian subtext, in practice it is causing significant 
damage to Russian-Armenian relations,” Russian news agencies quoted Vorobyov as 
saying.

“We call on our allies to once again carefully consider the implications of 
joining the Rome Statute and assess potential risks to allied relations with 
Russia,” he told deputy speaker Hakob Arshakian and other pro-government members 
of the Armenian parliament attending the meeting.

According the Armenian parliament’s press office, Arshakian assured the Russian 
side that Yerevan’s plans to submit to the ICC’s jurisdiction are “in no way 
directed against Russia” and are aimed instead at “preventing Azerbaijani 
attacks on the sovereign territory of Armenia.”

Other Armenian officials made similar statements following the Constitutional 
Court ruling which came one week after the ICC issued the arrest warrant for 
Putin over war crimes allegedly committed by Russia in Ukraine. Moscow was not 
convinced by those assurances. It warned Yerevan later in March that the 
ratification of the Rome Statute is “absolutely unacceptable” and would have 
“extremely negative” consequences for bilateral ties.

Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian meet in Sochi, June 9, 2023.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government appears to have ignored the warning, 
sending the treaty to the National Assembly for ratification late last month.

Arshakian revealed on Friday that “active discussions” on the matter are now 
underway between Armenian and Russian diplomats. He expressed confidence that a 
“legal solution acceptable to Armenia and Russia” will be found.

Independent legal experts believe that recognition of the ICC’s jurisdiction 
would require the Armenian authorities to arrest Putin and extradite him to The 
Hague tribunal if he visits the South Caucasus country.

Armenian opposition lawmakers have expressed serious concern over such a 
dramatic possibility, saying that it would ruin the country’s relationship with 
its key ally. One of them claimed in March that Pashinian engineered the 
Constitutional Court ruling to “please the West.” Most of the court’s current 
judges have been installed by Pashinian’s political team.

Russian-Armenian relations had already soured in the months leading up to the 
March ruling due to what Pashinian’s administration sees as a lack of Russian 
support for Armenia in the conflict with Azerbaijan.

Earlier this week, South Africa announced that Putin will not attend a summit of 
the BRICS nations in Johannesburg scheduled for August. South Africa is a 
signatory to the ICC treaty.




Armenia Warns Of Famine In Blockade-Hit Karabakh


Nagorno-Karabakh - Residents of Stepanakert line up outside a food store to buy 
bread, July 18, 2023.


Armenia urged the international community on Thursday to put stronger pressure 
on Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin corridor, saying that Nagorno-Karabakh’s 
population is “on the verge of starvation.”

“We are not speaking about a looming crisis anymore; we speak about an ongoing 
humanitarian disaster,” Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told an emergency 
session of the Vienna-based Permanent Council of the Organization for Security 
and Cooperation in Europe. “The mediaeval practices should be ceased. This 
cannot continue if we are serious about values and principles.

“The international community in general and the OSCE in particular cannot remain 
silent simply because the lives of 120 thousand people are at stake,” he said.

Armenia initiated the meeting to draw greater international attention to the 
seven-month blockade of Karabakh’s sole land link with the outside world, which 
has led to severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel and other essential items in 
the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh - Empty shelves at a grocery store in Stepanakert, July 18, 
2023.

Azerbaijan has also cut off Armenia’s supplies of electricity and natural gas to 
Karabakh. The humanitarian crisis deteriorated after Baku blocked on June 15 
relief supplies carried out, in limited amounts, by Russian peacekeepers and the 
Red Cross.

“Prior to the blockade, around 90 percent of all consumed food was imported from 
Armenia, and with every passing day the people of Nagorno-Karabakh don’t receive 
400 tons of essential goods,” said Mirzoyan. “Furthermore, by using force and 
the threat of force, Azerbaijan continues to obstruct agricultural activities on 
approximately 10,000 hectares of land adjacent to the line of contact, which 
constitutes a significant portion of [Karabakh’s] total cultivated land.”

“As a result, today the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are on the verge of hunger 
and starvation,” he warned.

The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly called for an 
end to the blockade. Moscow said late last week that it could have “the most 
dramatic consequences” for the local population.

Nagorno-Karabakh - Karabakh Armenians protest against the Azerbaijani blockade 
of the Lachin corridor, July 14, 2023.

Baku has rejected such appeals, denying the humanitarian crisis. It has offered 
to supply Karabakh with basic necessities from Azerbaijan proper. Karabakh’s 
leadership has rejected the offer as a cynical ploy designed to facilitate the 
restoration of Azerbaijani control over the Armenian-populated territory.

Mirzoyan said that the blockade could also “seriously harm” ongoing 
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on a bilateral peace treaty. But he stopped 
short of threatening to suspend the talks if Baku remains adamant in keeping 
Karabakh cut off from the outside world.

Mirzoyan also reaffirmed Yerevan’s readiness to recognize Azerbaijani 
sovereignty over Karabakh through the treaty. “The respect for the territorial 
integrity of Azerbaijan should not and could not be anyhow misinterpreted and 
used as a license for ethnic cleansings in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he added.

Domestic critics of the Armenian government say the recognition openly pledged 
by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in May only emboldened Baku to tighten the 
noose around Karabakh. They are also highly skeptical about Yerevan’s insistence 
on an internationally mediated dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert on “the 
rights and security” of Karabakh’s population.


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