Wednesday, Pashinian Defends Policy Of ‘Diversifying’ Security Ties Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks in parliament (file photo) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has defended the policy of his government seeking to diversify relations in the security sphere, again noting the failure of the South Caucasus nation’s formal ally, Russia, to sell arms to it. Apparently implying Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine that admittedly consumes a vast amount of armaments and resources from Moscow, Pashinian said that the absence of arms supplies from partners was also due to “objective reasons.” “We are looking for other security partners. And we are looking for and finding other security partners, we are trying to sign contracts, acquire some armaments. This is our policy,” the Armenian leader said in parliament on Wednesday. Armenia recently signed military cooperation deals with France for the acquisition of such weapons as armored personnel vehicles, radars and short-range missiles. Reports in media have also indicated that Armenia has signed contracts for the purchase of several types of armaments from India, including multiple-launch rocket systems, artillery, anti-tank rockets and ammunition, as well as mostly recently anti-drone military equipment. During the question-and-answer session in parliament today Pashinian again refused to be drawn into the discussion of whether Armenia plans to formally quit the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led defense alliance of several post-Soviet countries of which Armenia is a member, nor would he speak about any security alternatives to membership in this organization. “We are not planning to announce a change in our policy in strategic terms as long as we haven’t made a decision to quit the CSTO,” Pashinian said in reply to a question from an opposition lawmaker. On Tuesday Pashinian announced that he would not attend a CSTO summit scheduled to take place in the Belarusian capital of Minsk later this month. Earlier this year Armenia also declined to participate in CSTO military drills, while hosting joint exercises with the United States military in Yerevan. This and several other moves by Yerevan drew angry reactions from Russia that has accused the Pashinian administration of systematically “destroying” relations with Moscow. Officials in Yerevan have not concealed their frustration with the CSTO, considering that the Russia-led bloc has failed to fulfill its obligation to Armenia to secure its borders and protect its sovereign territory against incursions by Azerbaijan. “Our most important note concerning the processes taking place in the CSTO and our positions in this regard is that unfortunately the CSTO, with its de-jure mandatory obligations, did not provide a proper response to Armenia’s security challenges, and this has happened time and again,” Pashinian said, adding that the absence of the CSTO’s proper response was also “not understandable for our society.” The Armenian prime minister said that the “fundamental problem” was that the CSTO was refusing to de-jure fixate its area of responsibility in Armenia. “In these conditions this could mean that by silently participating we could join the logic that would question Armenia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We can’t allow ourselves such a thing, and by making such decisions [not to attend CSTO gatherings] we give the CSTO and ourselves time to think over further actions,” Pashinian said. Tensions between Armenia and Russia rose further after Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that led to the exodus of the region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population. Armenia, in particular, blamed Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh under a 2020 ceasefire agreement between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan for failing to protect the local Armenians. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Pashinian’s latest decision not to attend the upcoming CSTO summit, while a spokesperson for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the formal host of the gathering in Minsk, said that during their phone call earlier this week the Belarusian leader warned the Armenian prime minister against making “hasty decisions”, suggesting that he “should seriously think over his next steps that could be aimed at disintegration.” U.S. Says Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians Entitled To Return Home Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State (file photo). Ethnic Armenians who left Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan took full control of the region in a lightening military operation in September are entitled to return home, a senior United States official has said. During a Tuesday press briefing in Washington a journalist asked Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, to give a preview of what would be discussed during a congressional hearing on the future of Nagorno-Karabakh that was planned for the next day, November 15. The correspondent, in particular, said: “You have Azerbaijan on [the] one hand celebrating the victory… in a town surrounded by [the] Russian army. You have Armenia [that] is being bullied by Russia every single day, saying that [it] won’t go anywhere… So is there any happy ending there, in your opinion?” According to the State Department’s official website, Miller replied: “I will just say what I said before. I don’t want to talk about tomorrow’s hearing, but I will say that we continue to believe that people who left Nagorno-Karabakh have the right to return home if they want to do so, and that right must be preserved.” More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the days that followed Azerbaijan’s offensive on September 19-20. According to different estimates, a couple of dozen ethnic Armenians currently remain in Nagorno-Karabakh that is under full Azerbaijani control now. Despite scaling back its peacekeeping mission, Russian servicemen still remain in the region where they were first deployed under the terms of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped a six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in the fall of 2020. Under that tripartite deal the Russian peacekeeping force would stay in the region at least until 2025. After the exodus of the local Armenian population and before that, in conditions of an effective blockade imposed by Azerbaijan, Armenia has repeatedly criticized Russia for failing to fulfill its main mission, that is to protect Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population. Officially Azerbaijan does not object to Armenians returning to Nagorno-Karabakh and living under Baku’s jurisdiction as Azerbaijani citizens, but authorities in Yerevan and representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh point to the absence of security guarantees for such returnees after what happened in the region during the past several years and months. Azerbaijan, at the same time, promotes the idea of the return of tens of thousands of ethnic Azeris to the places where they lived in Armenia before the conflict began in the late 1980s. In doing so Azerbaijani officials and media often use the term “Western Azerbaijan”, suggesting that Azeris who left Armenia lived in their “historical lands.” Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference on November 10, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian charged that the concept of “Western Azerbaijan” promoted by Baku is “preparing a new war against the Republic of Armenia.” Pashinian also stressed that about 360,000 ethnic Armenians were forcibly displaced from Azerbaijan since the conflict began over three decades ago. Armenian Official Sees Possibility Of Continuing Peace Talks With Azerbaijan In Washington Armen Grigorian, secretary of the Security Council of Armenia (file photo). Armenia sees the possibility of continuing negotiations with Azerbaijan over a peace treaty in Washington, a senior official in Yerevan has said. In an interview with Public Television aired on Tuesday evening Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigorian reminded that Azerbaijan had refused to attend a meeting of the two countries’ leaders that was planned to be held with the European Union’s mediation in Brussels in late October. “We are ready to continue negotiations in this [Brussels] format to finalize the peace treaty and sign it by the end of the year if it is possible. There is also a possibility of continuing such negotiations at another level, for instance, in Washington. Armenia is ready, and let’s hope that such a meeting will take place,” Grigorian said. The official reminded that Louis Bono, a U.S. special envoy for Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks, recently visited the region. “He was discussing possible meetings. Of course, it is not final, but one of the goals of the visit was to organize a meeting,” Grigorian said. Asked why such a meeting could not be organized in Moscow, Grigorian said: “We go where we consider it important, where we see an opportunity at the moment and from where we have received clear offers. I am not aware of any offers from Moscow.” Commenting on a series of decisions by official Yerevan to skip major gatherings of Russia-led groupings, including the latest decision by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian not to attend an upcoming summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Grigorian emphasized that Armenia had been asking help from the CSTO since May 2021, but did not receive the necessary assistance to protect its sovereign territory against Azerbaijani aggression. “We have had numerous questions to the CSTO, answers to which we have not received till now. And this is also the reason why Armenia does not participate in the CSTO [sessions],” the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council said. Earlier this year Armenia also refused to participate in CSTO military drills, while hosting joint military drills with the United States in Yerevan. Pashinian also declined to attend a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a wider and looser grouping of ex-Soviet states, in Kyrgyzstan on October 13. These and other similar moves by Yerevan have increasingly been seen in Russia, which dominates the CSTO, as “unfriendly.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week accused Pashinian’s administration of systematically “destroying” Russian-Armenian relations, a claim dismissed in Yerevan. Tensions between Armenia and Russia rose further after Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that led to the exodus of the region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population. Armenia, in particular, blamed Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh under a 2020 ceasefire agreement between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan for failing to protect the local Armenians. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Pashinian’s latest decision not to attend the upcoming CSTO summit, while a spokesperson for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the formal host of the gathering in Minsk, said that during their phone call earlier this week the Belarusian leader warned the Armenian prime minister against making “hasty decisions”, suggesting that he “should seriously think over his next steps that could be aimed at disintegration.” Despite the deepening rift in relations between Yerevan and Moscow, Pashinian has so far announced no plans to pull his country out of the CSTO or demand the withdrawal of Russian troops stationed in Armenia. In the November 14 interview with Armenia’s Public Television Security Council Secretary Grigorian repeated what Pashinian and other Armenian officials have said before, saying that “it is not Armenia that is quitting the CSTO, but it is the CSTO that is quitting the region.” Armenia, UK Discuss Defense Cooperation As ‘Strategic Dialogue’ Commences Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and British Minister for Europe Leo Docherty during their meeting in London, November 13, 2023. Armenia and the United Kingdom discussed defense cooperation among “a range of global and regional issues of mutual concern” as part of a “Strategic Dialogue” launched during Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s visit to London this week. According to a joint statement issued by the parties following the first session on November 13, it was “an opportunity to mark the strong cooperation and friendship between our two democracies.” “With the increase globally in threats to democratic values, human rights, rule of law and the freedoms we strive to protect our citizens, working together on issues of mutual concern։ it is more important than ever not only to build trade and stability, but also to protect our shared core values. We reaffirmed the aspiration to build our partnership over the coming years,” the statement said. Among the ways in which Armenia and the UK can work together in the future the parties indicated several major areas, including governance and rule of law, defense cooperation, trade and economic ties. According to the statement, the UK “will soon begin working to support Armenia’s border management capacities to tackle security and migration issues.” “[It is] Armenia-UK defense cooperation, which continues to expand with increased numbers of personnel from the Armenian military and Ministry of Defense, and police (Ministry of Internal Affairs) personnel receiving English Language training instruction, as well as places on UK senior and junior command and leadership courses, and multi-national peace-keeping and mine-awareness packages,” the statement said. “The Ministers agreed on the absolute necessity of the establishment of peace and stability in the South Caucasus based on the mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders on the basis of the Alma Ata 1991 Declaration, and the opening of regional connectivity links based on full respect of each countries’ sovereignty and jurisdiction,” it added. UK/Armenia - Opening of the new building of Armenia's Embassy in the United Kingdom, London, November 13, 2023. Apart from holding talks with British Minister for Europe Leo Docherty, as part of his November 13-14 visit Armenian Foreign Minister Mirzoyan also attended the inauguration of a new Armenian embassy building in London. Speaking at the ceremony, Mirzoyan described it as a “historic moment.” “We not only open a building, but lay new foundations for deepening our relations. We are reaffirming our commitments to deepen our political dialogue, our economic ties, our cultural ties,” the Armenian minister said. U․S․ ‘Developing Record’ Of What Happened In Nagorno-Karabakh • Heghine Buniatian James O’Brien (file photo) The United States is developing a record of what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh and is working on support for Armenia, James O’Brien, Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, announced during a congressional hearing on Wednesday. During the hearing on “The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh” held by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, the high-ranking diplomat noted that the subject of investigation is not only what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh during September when the region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population fled their homes within a matter of days after a lightening military operation launched by Azerbaijan, but also during the months preceding it. “We have commissioned independent investigators, we have our own investigators working in the field. There is information available from international non-governmental organizations and other investigators. And as we develop the record of what happened, we will be completely open about what we are finding. I can’t put a timeline on this investigation, but we will inform you as we go forward,” O’Brien said. “The second thing we are working on is support for Armenia… I am very impressed by the Armenian government’s commitment to reforms and diversifying relationships that it has – economic, political, energy and security – particularly in the Trans-Atlantic community. And I think we owe it to the people of Armenia to help them through this difficult situation so that those choices they have made very bravely are able to help them to make them have a more secure, stable and prosperous future,” the U.S. diplomat added. Speaking on behalf of the Department of State, O’Brien said that Washington insists that Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians have complete access to the territory, on the protection of the property and culture and that they receive adequate information “so that they can make real choice about their future.” Members of the Subcommittee also talked about the settlement of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, emphasizing that the countries hindering the process, including Russia, should be kept away from the negotiations. Presenting what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, Congressman Bill Keating said that despite months of diplomatic talks that had led to “significant progress”, in September 2023 Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev “decided to break with the internationally accepted and lawful diplomatic path, instead opting for the use of military force in Nagorno-Karabakh.” “As a result of Azerbaijan’s unacceptable military action over 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh, resettling in Armenia and leaving their personal belongings and their livelihoods behind them. I strongly believe we must provide humanitarian and economic assistance to displaced people in Armenia and ensure accountability for any potential crimes committed against those fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh or those who are choosing to remain there,” Keating underscored. U.S. Envoy Joins EU Mission Patrol In Northeastern Armenia U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Kristina A. Kvien joins the EUMA on patrol to areas of the Tavush Province. . United States Ambassador Kristina A. Kvien has joined the European Union’s mission (EUMA) on patrol to border areas in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush Province, the EUMA said in an X post on Wednesday. The EUMA published photographs showing Kvien’s visit, saying that it was facilitated by the mission’s Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Ijevan. The EUMA currently consisting of 100 or so observers and experts was launched at the request of the Armenian government in late 2022 with the stated aim of preventing or reducing ceasefire violations along the border with Azerbaijan. Since its deployment the mission has carried out more than a thousand patrols along the restive Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The EUMA operates from six FOBs situated in towns of Armenia’s Syunik, Vayots Dzor, Gegharkunik and Tavush provinces. The Azerbaijani takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in September this year has raised more fears in Yerevan that Azerbaijan will invade Armenia to open a land corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave. Azerbaijan has also publicly raised the issue of “Soviet-era exclaves” in Armenia. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged Western powers to prevent Baku from “provoking a new war in the region” when he addressed the European Parliament in October. EU foreign ministers on Monday gave the green light to a proposal to beef up the border-monitoring mission in Armenia. When the measure is submitted to the European Commission it will need to come up with a proposal on how the EUMA can be expanded. The decisions of the European Commission, in turn, must be ratified by the 27 EU member states. Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2023 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.