Monday, December 4, 2023
Armenian Parliament Majority Opposes Karabakh Ballot Initiative
• Anush Mkrtchian
• Shoghik Galstian
Armenia - A meeting of the parliament committee on legal affairs, Yerevan,
December 4, 2023.
Pro-government lawmakers rejected on Monday an opposition-backed ballot
initiative to legally ban Armenia’s leadership from recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh
as part of Azerbaijan.
The initiative dubbed Hayakve (Armenian vote) was launched by a group of
Armenian political activists and public figures this summer following Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial pledge to recognize Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Karabakh through an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
The campaigners have specifically demanded two new articles of the Criminal Code
which would make the Armenian government’s recognition of Karabakh’s
incorporation into Azerbaijan and its refusal to seek greater international
recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide crimes punishable by between 10 and 15
years in prison. They argue that this would be in line with a 1990 declaration
of independence adopted by Armenia’s first post-Communist parliament.
Armenian law requires the parliament to discuss any initiative backed by at
least 50,000 citizens. Hayakve has collected 58,000 signatures in support of its
demands.
The parliament committee on legal affairs gave a negative assessment of the
initiative at the end of a heated discussion that lasted for seven hours and
involved bitter recriminations between its pro-government and opposition
members. The decision means that the National Assembly controlled by Pashinian’s
Civil Contract party is unlikely to even include the issue on the agenda of its
plenary session on Tuesday.
Armenia - Citizens sign a petition on Nagorno-Karabakh in Yerevan, June 29, 2023.
Artsvik Minasian, a parliament deputy from the main opposition Hayastan
alliance, accused Civil Contract of “deceiving” Armenians who voted for it in
the June 2021 general elections. Minasian argued that in its election manifesto
the ruling party pledged to assert the Karabakh Armenians’ right to
self-determination.
The Armenian government stopped making references to that right on the
international stage one year before Pashinian declared that it recognizes
Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan. It cited instead the need to protect the
“rights and security” of the Karabakh Armenians through the Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace treaty and other international mechanisms.
Pashinian’s administration appears to have stopped seeking such security
guarantees as well after the recent Azerbaijani military offensive that restored
Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced its practically entire population
to flee to Armenia.
Alen Simonian, the Armenian parliament speaker and a key Pashinian ally, said
last week that the peace treaty should not contain any special provisions on
Karabakh and the return of its ethnic Armenian residents.
Eduard Aghajanian, another senior Civil Contract lawmaker, backed Simonian’s
stance on Monday, saying that the security of the Karabakh Armenians will be
best ensured in Armenia.
“Right now it’s better to concentrate on eliminating the consequences of the
Artsakh people’s post-traumatic stress and doing the best to establish peace,”
Aghajanian told reporters.
Armenian Soldier Killed On Azeri Border
• Susan Badalian
Armenia - Armenian soldiers take up positions on the border with Azerbaijan,
August 2, 2022.
An Armenian soldier serving on the border with Azerbaijan was shot dead on
Monday in what official Yerevan described as an Azerbaijani ceasefire violation
aimed at torpedoing peace talks.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said the soldier, Gerasim Arakelian, was fatally
wounded by sniper fire at an Armenian army post near the village of Bardzruni
bordering Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry denied the “provocative information,” saying
that its troops did not breach the ceasefire.
The head of the Bardzruni administration, Arsen Aleksanian, told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service that local residents heard the sounds of cross-border gunfire.
Serious truce violations at that section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border have
been rare until now.
“We strongly condemn these actions of the Azerbaijani side aimed at provoking a
new escalation, dragging out the peace process and bringing it to a dead end,”
the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the deadly incident.
The statement also said that Baku is “continuously rejecting offers from various
international actors to continue negotiations” with Yerevan.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan deplored Baku’s “refusal to come to meetings
organized by various international actors, including the U.S. and the EU” when
he addressed last week an annual conference of the top diplomats of OSCE member
states. His Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov said Yerevan itself is
dragging out talks on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev twice cancelled EU-mediated talks with
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian planned for October. Bayramov similarly
withdrew from a November 20 meeting with Mirzoyan that was due to take place in
Washington. Baku accused the Western powers of pro-Armenian bias and proposed
direct negotiations with Yerevan.
Armenian Official Sheds Light On ‘Weapons Not Supplied By Russia’
• Shoghik Galstian
RUSSIA – The Pantsyr S-1 air defense missile system is seen atop the Russian
Defense Ministry headquarters in Moscow on April 17, 2023
Russia has failed to provide Armenia with any of the weapons or other military
equipment covered by bilateral defense contracts worth $400 million signed after
the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a senior Armenian official said on Monday.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his political allies have repeatedly made
such claims over the past year amid Armenia’s worsening relations with Russia.
But they gave no details of those contracts. The Russian government has still
not reacted to those claims.
Armenia’s Deputy Defense Minister Hrachya Sargsyan is the first official to
reveal the amount of money which Yerevan claims to have paid Russia’s
state-owned arms manufacturers. But he declined to specify the types of weaponry
that are listed in those contracts.
Sargsian said the contracts remain valid and the Armenian side still hopes the
Russians will fulfill their obligations. “I think that the issue will be solved
through our partnership,” he told reporters.
Pashinian said on November 24 that the two sides are discussing the matter and
he hopes they will reach an agreement. Russia itself “needs weapons” now, he
said, clearly alluding to its continuing war with Ukraine.
In Pashinian’s words, one of the options under consideration is for Russia to
write off part of Armenia’s debt to it in exchange for not delivering the
weapons in question.
Russia has long been Armenia’s principal supplier of weapons and ammunition. But
with no end in sight to the war in Ukraine and tensions between Moscow and
Yerevan continuing to grow, the Armenian government is increasingly looking for
other arms suppliers.
Since September 2022 it has reportedly signed a number of defense contracts with
India worth at least $400 million. In October this year, it also signed two arms
deals with France.
Pashinian and members of his political team say that this is part of their
broader efforts to “diversify” Armenia’s defense and security policy. They
regularly accuse Moscow of not honoring its security commitments to its South
Caucasus ally.
More French Arms Supplies To Armenia Revealed
UAE - A French ACMAT Bastion armoured personnel carrier at a defense exhibition
in Abu Dhabi, February 25, 2015:
France will deliver a total of 50 armored personnel carriers (APCs) to Armenia
as part of growing military ties between the two nations, according to French
lawmakers.
The first batch of over two dozen Bastion vehicles apparently bound for Armenia
was spotted in the Georgian port of Poti and reported by Azerbaijani media about
a month ago. The Armenian Defense Ministry declined to explicitly confirm the
delivery.
The APCs manufactured by the French company Arquus were not part of defense
contracts signed by French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and his Armenian
counterpart Suren Papikian during the latter’s visit to Paris in late October.
One of those deal calls for Armenia’s purchase of three air-defense radar
systems from the French defense group Thales. Lecornu and Papikian also signed a
“letter of intent” on the future delivery of Mistral short-range surface-to-air
missiles.
In a joint report on a French budgetary bill, two members of France’s Senate
revealed that “24 Bastion-type armored vehicles … are being delivered to Armenia
and they should be joined by 26 other vehicles of the same type currently in
production.”
The senators, Hugues Saury and Helene Conway-Mouret, said French arms supplies
to Armenia should not be confined to “defensive” equipment.
“This distinction between defensive and offensive weapons is not very practical
in reality, as has been demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. Let us not repeat
the same mistakes by belatedly delivering equipment that could be necessary
right from the beginning,” says their report submitted to the French upper house
of parliament late last month.
France - French Defense Minsiter Sebastien Lecornu and his Armenian counterpart
Suren Papikian sign a memorandum of understanding in Paris, October 23, 2023.
Saury and Conway-Mouret indicated in this regard that Yerevan wants to acquire
French artillery systems as well. Paris should therefore consider providing
155-milimeter CAESAR self-propelled howitzers to the Armenian military, they
said.
Azerbaijan condemned the French-Armenian arms deals earlier in November, saying
that they will “bolster Armenia’s military potential and its ability to carry
out destructive operations in the region.”
Armenian officials countered that Yerevan’s arms acquisitions are a response to
an Azerbaijani military build-up which has continued even after the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh. They argued that Azerbaijan’s military budget is three times
bigger than Armenia’s. Israeli media reported around the same time that Baku has
purchased more Israeli Barak air-defense systems in a deal worth as much as $1.2
billion.
In the past several months, Azerbaijani cargo planes have reportedly carried out
dozens of more flights to and from Israel’s only airfield through which
explosives can be flown into and out of the country. According to the Haaretz
daily, the frequency of such flights spiked in the run-up to Azerbaijan’s
September 19-20 military offensive in Karabakh.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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