Monday,
Aliyev ‘Reluctant To Meet Pashinian’
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Parliament deputy Armen Khachatrian.
A senior Armenian lawmaker suggested on Monday that Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev is now reluctant to hold further talks with Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian to finalize a peace accord sought by Western powers.
Aliyev and Pashinian had been expected to sign a document laying out the key
parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty at a meeting with the leaders
of the European Union, Germany and France slated for October 5. However, Aliyev
withdrew from the talks at the last minute, citing pro-Armenian statements made
by French officials.
EU Council President Charles Michel said afterwards that the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leaders will likely hold a trilateral meeting with him in Brussels
later in October. It was confirmed last week that the rescheduled meeting will
not take place in the coming days.
“It means that [Aliyev] doesn’t want a meeting at the moment,” said Armen
Khachatrian, the deputy chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on defense
and security.
Speaking in the Armenian parliament earlier in the day, Pashinian said that
Yerevan and Baku broadly agree on three key principles of the Western-backed
treaty discussed by them. Those include mutually recognizing the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border dating back to Soviet times, and using late
Soviet-era maps to delimit it, he told lawmakers.
Khachatrian claimed, however, that Baku has so far declined to formalize those
understandings.
“They may say in the presence of international mediators that these are very
good principles, that they agree to them … but take no real steps in practice to
implement those principles,” he told reporters.
“Right now we see some delays, which is not good,” added the lawmaker
representing Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party.
Still, Khachatrian expressed confidence that Western pressure will force Baku to
stop dragging its feet. The EU urged Baku and Yerevan late last week to finalize
the treaty before the end of this year.
Armenia Joins Ukraine-Backed Talks In Malta
Malta - Andriy Yermak (right), head of Ukraine's presidential office, meets
Armen Grigorian, secretary of Armenia's Security Council, October 28, 2023.
In a move that could add to tensions between Armenia and Russia, a senior
Armenian official attended peace talks initiated by Ukraine and met with the
chief of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s staff in Malta at the weekend.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, was among
representatives of more than 60 countries who gathered on the island to discuss
Zelenskiy’s 10-point plan to end the war with Russia. The plan calls for the
restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and withdrawal of Russian troops
from the country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the two-day meeting as a “blatantly
anti-Russian event” that has “nothing to do with the search for a peaceful
resolution.”
Andriy Yermak, the powerful head of Zelenskiy’s office, thanked Grigorian for
his participation when they met on the sidelines of the event. A statement by
the office said Yermak praised “Armenia's decision to join the group of states
supporting the Ukrainian Peace Formula.”
“The head of the Office of the President confirmed Ukraine's readiness to
strengthen cooperation with Armenia, particularly in the context of European
integration,” added the statement.
Spain - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet in Granada, October 5, 2023.
Yermak also spoke of “a new context” in Ukrainian-Armenian relations, pointing
to Zelenskiy’s first-ever meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
held during the European Union’s October 5 summit in Granada.
The two leaders spoke in the Spanish city one month after Pashinian’s wife, Anna
Hakobian, visited Kyiv to attend the annual Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen
held there. Hakobian also delivered Armenia’s first humanitarian aid to Ukraine
since the start of the Russian invasion.
The Russian Foreign Ministry listed Hakobian’s trip among “a series of
unfriendly steps” taken by Yerevan against Moscow when it summoned the Armenian
ambassador a few days later.
Russian-Armenian relations have deteriorated further since then. Pashinian last
week again accused Russia of not honoring its security commitments to Armenia
and defended his efforts to “diversify” his country’s foreign and security
policies. He made clear, though, that Yerevan has no plans yet to demand the
withdrawal of Russian troops from Armenia.
Incidentally, neither Grigorian nor his office issued a statement on his meeting
with Yermak as of Monday evening. Grigorian posted on his Facebook page instead
readouts of his meetings with other foreign officials attending the Malta talks.
Dozens Reported Dead During Karabakh Exodus
• Susan Badalian
A satellite image shows a long traffic jam of vehicles along the Lachin corridor
as ethnic Armenians flee from the Nagorno-Karabakh, September 26, 2023.
At least 64 people died during last month’s mass exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh’s
population resulting from an Azerbaijani military offensive, an Armenian
law-enforcement agency said on Monday.
More than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians, the region’s virtually entire remaining
population, fled to Armenia in the space of a week. The hundreds of cars, buses
and trucks carrying them caused a massive traffic jam on a 50-kilometer road
connecting Armenia to Stepanakert. It reportedly took them at least 30 hours to
reach the Armenian border.
A spokesman for Armenia’s Investigative Committee, Gor Abrahamian, told RFE/RL’s
Armenia Service that 64 refugees died during the arduous journey due to a lack
of medicine, medical aid, food and heating.
The Armenian authorities maintain that Karabakh’s depopulation is the result of
“ethnic cleansing” carried out by Azerbaijan. Baku denies forcing local
residents to flee their homes.
Citing tentative data from Karabakh authorities, Abrahamian also said the
24-hour hostilities, which broke out on September 19, left that more than 200
Karabakh soldiers and nine local civilians, including three children, dead.
Thirty other soldiers and 12 civilians remain unaccounted for, he said.
It is not clear if they might be among some 50 people who went missing during
the September 25 explosion at a fuel depot outside Stepanakert. At least 220
Karabakh residents died in the powerful blast and a fire sparked by it.
Earlier this month, Armenia’s human rights ombudswoman, Anahit Manasian, accused
Azerbaijani troops of committing war crimes during the assault. “There are many
bodies, including of civilians, transported from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia
that carry signs of torture and/or mutilation,” Manasian told reporters.
The Investigative Committee put the number of allegedly tortured Karabakh
Armenians at 14.
Karabakh Leader Hopes For Mass Repatriation
Armenia - Samvel Shahramanian, the Nagorno Karabakh president, is interviewed by
Artsakh Public TV, Yerevan, October 28, 2023.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population, which fled to Armenia following
the recent Azerbaijani military offensive, could and should be able to return to
its homeland, Karabakh’s exiled president said over the weekend.
Samvel Shahramanian also defended his decision to accept the Azerbaijani terms
of the ceasefire that stopped the September 19-20 offensive. It allowed more
than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians, including military personnel, to “safely leave
Artsakh,” Shahramanian said in an interview with Karabakh television posted on
social media. He noted Russian peacekeepers’ failure to try to stop the assault.
The Azerbaijani demands accepted by him included the dissolution of Karabakh’s
government bodies and armed forces. In addition, Shahramanian signed a decree on
September 28 saying that the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR),
set up in September 1991, will cease to exist on January 1.
“Hours after the start of the hostilities I realized that we are alone in the
face of that aggression,” Shahramanian told Artsakh Public Television. “It can
be said that the Russian side was acting like an observer, and we had to solve
our issues on our own.”
“It was clear to us that we must stop the hostilities because we were greatly
outnumbered and the longer we held out the more casualties we would have
suffered,” he said, adding that his administration managed to “save the lives”
of not only the surviving Karabakh soldiers but also civilians.
Shahramanian implied that his September 28 decree is null and void when he was
confronted by dozens of angry Karabakh refugees in Yerevan on October 20. He
sounded more ambiguous on that score in his latest interview.
Nagorno-Karabakh - A view of laundry hanging on clotheslines at an abandoned
residential area in Stepanakert, 10 October 2023.
“Without going into details, I want to state that we know the validity and
impact of that document and we will get to discuss it,” said the Karabakh leader.
Shahramanian further made clear that one of his top priorities now is to assert
“the right of our citizens displaced from Artsakh to return home.”
“Various political centers -- the American, European and Russian ones -- are
interested in the issue of the return of the population,” he said. “I think that
Azerbaijan is also interested in that because they are accused by the
international community of forcibly deporting the population. And I think that
negotiations should start on that issue.”
The Azerbaijani government has said that the Karabakh Armenians are free to
return to their homes if they agree to live under Azerbaijani rule. Only a few
dozen of them are thought to have stayed in the depopulated region.
Shahramanian was elected president by Karabakh lawmakers just ten days before
the Azerbaijani offensive. His predecessor Arayik Harutiunian, who was arrested
by Azerbaijan after the assault, was seen as a figure more loyal to Armenian
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Pashinian’s political allies have openly blamed the Azerbaijani takeover of
Karabakh on the leadership change in Stepanakert. Shahramanian dismissed their
accusations. But he was careful not to echo Armenian opposition claims that
Pashinian himself precipitated the fall of Karabakh with his decision to
recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the territory.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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