Wednesday,
French Aid Convoy Barred From Entering Karabakh
• Tigran Hovsepian
Armenia - French officials escort a humanitarian aid convoy to the Lachin
corridor, .
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and other French local government officials escorted a
convoy of trucks to the Lachin corridor on Wednesday in a failed attempt to
provide humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh’s population increasingly suffering
from the Azerbaijani blockade.
The ten trucks carried food and other essential items provided by the municipal
administrations of several French cities and regions. Azerbaijan refused to let
them proceed to Karabakh through a checkpoint which it controversially set up in
the corridor in April.
“Here, at the Lachin Corridor, we can testify that no humanitarian aid can enter
Artsakh, a gross violation of human rights. Our 10 humanitarian aid trucks are
blocked,” Hidalgo tweeted from an Armenian border area adjacent to the
corridor’s starting point.
The Armenian government also tried unsuccessfully to send 360 tons of flour,
cooking oil, sugar and other basic foodstuffs to Karabakh in late July. Its aid
convoy remains stuck at the entrance to the corridor.
Armenia - Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo gestures during a news conference in Goris,
.
Hidalgo likened the eight-month blockade to genocide when spoke to reporters in
the nearby Armenian town of Goris.
“What is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh is something that resembles genocide
perpetrated by an authoritarian regime against people seeking to exercise their
rights,” the Socialist mayor told a joint news conference with other members of
the French delegation headed by her.
Bruno Retailleau, a conservative French senator who also joined the delegation,
accused Baku of turning Karabakh into an “open-air concentration camp.”
“This attempted ethnic cleansing and genocide targets 120,000 people, including
30,000 children,” Retailleau said.
Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, joined the news conference via video
link from Stepanakert. He thanked the French municipalities for their initiative
strongly encouraged by leaders of France’s influential Armenian community.
Armenia - A French humanitarian aid convoy is stuck at the entrance to the
Lachin corridor, .
Harutiunian said the Azerbaijani leadership hopes that the severe food shortages
resulting from the blockade will help it “bring Artsakh to its knees.” “But it
will not succeed,” he said.
The visiting French officials called on French President Emmanuel Macron to
urgently draft a resolution against the blockade and try to push it through the
UN Security Council. France’s Le Figaro daily reported last week that Paris is
“preparing to submit” such a resolution to the Security Council.
Macron pledged on Monday to seek stronger international pressure on Baku. French
Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said the following day that the blockade is
aimed at forcing the Karabakh Armenians to leave their homeland. The Azerbaijani
Foreign Ministry rejected those statements as pro-Armenian and untrue.
Macron spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev by phone on Tuesday.
Russia Blames Pashinian For Karabakh Crisis
Russia - Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gestures during
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's annual news conference in Moscow,, January 18,
2023.
The deepening humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh caused by Azerbaijan’s
blockade of the Lachin corridor was made possible by Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s decision to recognize Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, Russia
said on Wednesday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to Pashinian’s controversial move as it
responded to Armenian criticism of Moscow’s failure to unblock Karabakh’s sole
land link with the outside world and prevent recent Azerbaijani arrests of four
Karabakh men travelling to Armenia through the corridor.
“I would like to remind that the current situation in the Lachin corridor is a
consequence of Armenia’s recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of the
territory of Azerbaijan,” said the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. “This
was formalized as a result of summits attended by the leaders of the two
countries under the aegis of the European Union in October 2022 and May 2023.”
“We believe that placing the blame in this context on the Russian peacekeeping
contingent is inappropriate, wrong and unjustified,” Zakharova told a news
briefing.
The Russian Foreign Ministry already stated on July 15 that Pashinian’s decision
to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh “radically changed the
underlying conditions” in which the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan
negotiated an agreement to end the 2020 war in Karabakh. The truce agreement
committed Baku to ensuring unhindered commercial traffic through the Lachin
corridor.
The Armenian opposition has likewise said that Pashinian’s far-reaching
concession to Baku emboldened the latter to tighten the screws on the Karabakh
Armenians. Opposition leaders have also pointed out that Azerbaijan remains
reluctant to recognize Armenia’s own territorial integrity.
Pashinian complained on August 3 that Baku is seeking to sign the kind of peace
treaty with Yerevan that would not preclude Azerbaijani territorial claims to
Armenia. A senior Russian diplomat criticized the following day what he
described as Western attempts to “artificially” speed up the signing of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani treaty.
Karabakh Armenians Block Supply Route Sought By Azerbaijan
• Susan Badalian
• Astghik Bedevian
Nagorno-Karabakh - Parliament's speaker Davit Ishkhanian visits Karabakh
protesters blocking the road to Aghdam, .
Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have set up a tent camp on a road leading to the
Azerbaijani town of Aghdam to prevent the delivery of Azerbaijan humanitarian
aid which they say is aimed at legitimizing Baku’s blockade of the Lachin
corridor.
They pitched the tents late on Tuesday near a Russian military checkpoint
separating the conflicting sides and spent the following night there after two
trucks carrying 40 tons of flour provided by the government-linked Azerbaijan
Red Crescent reached Aghdam.
“We don’t want to get anything from our enemy,” said Hamlet Apresian, the mayor
of Askeran, a Karabakh town close to Aghdam, who joined the protesters at the
blocked road section.
“We will never accept any aid from them,” Hasmik Andrian, a resident of the
nearby village of Khramort, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. She said Azerbaijani
troops have regularly opened fire at local farmers trying to harvest wheat.
Karabakh’s leaders reaffirmed support for this stance, saying that the proposed
aid is part of Azerbaijani efforts to deflect international attention from the
blockade and regain full control over the Armenian-populated region. They
insisted that Baku comply instead with the Russian-brokered 2020 ceasefire that
commits it to guaranteeing unfettered commercial and humanitarian traffic
through the Lachin corridor.
“There is a clear decision to keep that road [to Aghdam] closed,” Davit
Ishkhanian, the Karabakh parliament speaker, told reporters in Stepanakert. He
visited the Karabakh protesters camped out on that road later in the day.
Ngorno-Karabakh-- Karabakh protesters block the road to Aghdam, .
Baku pushed for an alternative, Azerbaijani-controlled supply line for Karabakh
after tightening the blockade in mid-June. Russian peacekeepers and the
International Committee of the Red Cross have since been unable to ship any
food, medicine or other basic necessities to Karabakh residents.
A senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told the BBC on Wednesday
that renewed humanitarian traffic through Karabakh’s blocked land link with
Armenia is conditional on the opening of the Aghdam road. Aliyev reportedly
underlined this condition on Tuesday in a phone call with French President
Emmanuel Macron whose government is increasingly critical of the blockade.
The European Union, the United States and Russia have also repeatedly called for
the immediate lifting of the blockade. The Azerbaijani side has dismissed their
appeals. It has also ignored a February order by the International Court of
Justice to “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of
persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.”
The Karabakh Armenians remain adamant in rejecting the Aghdam route despite
struggling with growing shortages of food. The Karabakh authorities admitted on
Tuesday that the region is running out of flour. They said that from now on each
family in Stepanakert and other Karabakh towns will be allowed to buy only one
loaf of bread a day.
Former Armenian Defense Chief To Remain In Jail
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Former Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan testifies before pro-government
lawmakers, Yerevan, August 1, 2023.
A court in Yerevan on Wednesday again refused to release Davit Tonoyan, a former
Armenian defense minister facing corruption charges, from custody pending a
verdict in his long-running trial.
Tonoyan was arrested two years ago in a criminal investigation into supplies of
allegedly outdated rockets to Armenia’s armed forces. The National Security
Service charged him, two generals and an arms dealer with fraud and embezzlement
that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($5.9 million). All four suspects,
among them former army chief of staff Artak Davtian, have denied the accusations
during the trial that began in January 2022.
The Anti-Corruption Court ruled to keep Tonoyan under arrest one day after a
three-hour hearing on yet another petition to free him submitted by his lawyer.
The lawyer, Avetik Karapetian, was not optimistic about his client’s release
when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service after the hearing.
“It would be naïve to expect a just decision from the court given its decisions
made before,” said Karapetian.
This and other courts had rejected at least five such petitions, citing witness
tampering concerns expressed by prosecutors. Karapetian dismissed those
concerns, arguing that all witnesses in the case have already testified during
the ongoing trial behind the closed doors.
The lawyer said that Tonoyan, who was sacked in the wake of the disastrous 2020
war with Azerbaijan, remains behind bars for political reasons. But he stopped
short of explicitly accusing the Armenian government of ordering law-enforcement
authorities to fabricate the charges.
Tonoyan likewise claimed shortly before the start of the trial that he is being
made a scapegoat for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. He he too avoided
pointing the finger at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
In early August, Tonoyan agreed to testify before an ad hoc parliamentary
commission tasked with examining the causes of the defeat. The two opposition
blocs represented in the National Assembly have been boycotting the work of the
commission. They say that it was set up last year to whitewash Pashinian’s
wartime incompetence and disastrous decision making.
Tonoyan called for an end to the opposition boycott when he appeared before the
commission made up of only pro-government lawmakers. Some opposition figures and
other critics of the government scoffed at the appeal, saying that the
ex-minister is desperate to get the authorities to set him free.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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