Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Armenia-Azerbaijan Treaty Not Enough For Peace, Says Aliyev
• Siranuysh Gevorgian
Azerbaijan -- President Ilham Aliyev speaks at an international forum in Baku,
December 6, 2023.
An Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty would not be enough to preclude another war
between the two countries, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.
“I hope that it will not take long to reach an agreement,” Aliyev said during a
forum in Baku organized by his administration. “But I want to point out that a
peace treaty does not fully guarantee peace. We know of many peace treaties that
were annulled and we know of countries that have lived without such treaties.”
“We know very well what is happening in Armenia and we know very well that
Armenia has bad advisers in European capitals … That is why we need to have
guarantees that there will be no more wars between the two countries and that
Armenia fully accepts the new status quo,” he added, according to Azerbaijani
media.
Aliyev did not elaborate on the safeguards against Armenian “revanchism” that
would satisfy him.
Armenian leaders have said, for their part, that they want clear international
guarantees for Baku’s compliance with the peace treaty. They have suggested that
Aliyev is reluctant to sign the kind of agreement that would preclude
Azerbaijani territorial claims to Armenia.
Aliyev twice cancelled EU-mediated talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian planned for October. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov
similarly withdrew from a November 20 meeting with his Armenian counterpart
Ararat Mirzoyan that was due to take place in Washington. Baku accused the
Western powers of pro-Armenian bias and proposed direct negotiations with
Yerevan.
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. Bayramov
countered that Yerevan itself is dragging out talks on the peace treaty.
Aliyev echoed that claim on Wednesday. He said that the Armenian side took more
than two months to respond to most recent Azerbaijani proposals on contentious
provisions of the treaty made in September. He said the Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry is now examining the written replies sent by Yerevan on November 21.
“After that, it would be appropriate for the foreign ministers to meet,” he said.
The Azerbaijani leader said nothing about his next meeting with Pashinian.
Pashinian Signals No Strategy On Karabakh’s Future
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian shares a word with Foreign Minister
Ararat Mirzoyan during a parliament session, December 6, 2023.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian insisted on Wednesday that his job is to secure
Armenia’s future as he was pressed by an opposition leader to explain his policy
on Nagorno-Karabakh following its depopulation and capture by Azerbaijan.
“What is Armenia’s strategy regarding the future of Artsakh within the framework
of your ‘There is a future!’ [pre-election] programs?” Seyran Ohanian, the
parliamentary leader of the opposition Hayastan alliance, asked during the
Armenian government’s question-and-answer session in the National Assembly.
Pashinian replied that he wants to strengthen Armenia’s security and
sovereignty. He again blamed former Armenian governments for the loss of
Karabakh and claimed that unspecified forces used the Karabakh conflict to
undermine Armenia’s independence.
“You are again trying to distort or manipulate things by not answering the
question,” countered Ohanian. “Whatever you say … it is during your rule that
Artsakh was depopulated and it is during your rule that negotiations [with
Azerbaijan] were stopped because of your contradictory statements and actions.
And now you are doing nothing to take back our historical territory of Artsakh
or at least negotiate for that purpose.”
“As prime minister of Armenia … my objective is the future of Armenia … The
Constitution of the Republic of Armenia gives me responsibility for the future
of the Republic of Armenia and I am focused on that issue,” said Pashinian.
He described as “ingratitude” critics’ claims that Yerevan “left Karabakh alone”
after the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.
Pashinian’s government stopped championing the Karabakh’s right to
self-determination in April 2022. A year later, Pashinian declared that it
recognizes Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan and will only strive to protect the
“rights and security” of the Karabakh Armenians through the Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace treaty and other international mechanisms.
Armenian opposition leaders say that this policy change paved the way for 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 top Pashinian ally, said last
week that a peace treaty currently discussed by Baku and Yerevan should not
contain any special provisions on Karabakh and the return of its ethnic Armenian
residents.
Armenian Defense Spending Set For More Modest Rise In 2024
Armenia - Armenian soldiers stand at a military base against the backdrop of
Mount Ararat, December 31, 2022.
The Armenian government is planning to increase its defense expenditures by 7
percent to 554 billion drams ($1.38 billion) next year, Finance Minister Vahe
Hovannisian said on Wednesday.
“As a result, our defense spending will be equivalent to 5.3 percent of GDP,
down by 0.3 percentage points from 2023,” Hovannisian told the Armenian
parliament as he presented the government’s draft state budget for 2024.
He said that 42 percent of 695 billion drams in capital spending planned by the
government in 2024 will also be channeled into national defense. This presumably
includes the construction of new barracks, other military installations and
border fortifications.
Armenia’s defense budget was projected to soar by as much as 46 percent this
year. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on November 16 that his government
will keep increasing it for purely defensive purposes.
“I’m sure that all of our neighbors realize that we do not intend to attack
anyone,” he said in an apparent effort to reassure Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani government spending on defense and national security is reportedly
due to total $3.5 billion this year. President Ilham Aliyev said recently that
Azerbaijan’s will continue its military buildup despite its victory in the 2020
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baku has denounced India, France and other foreign nations for selling weapons
to Armenia. Meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in
Moscow on Tuesday, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov reportedly said
that “efforts to arm Armenia pose a threat to regional peace and stability.”
Pashinian’s Party Scraps Power-Sharing Deal In Gyumri
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia - The Mayor's Office in Gyumri.
Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party on Wednesday pulled out of a power-sharing
agreement with a political group that won most votes in municipal elections held
in Gyumri two years ago.
The country’s second largest city was run Samvel Balasanian, a local
businessman, until October 2021. Although Balasanian decided not to seek another
term in office, a newly created bloc bearing his name participated in the
elections and garnered 36.6 percent of the vote, giving it 14 seats in the
33-member city council empowered to elect the mayor.
In a serious setback for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Civil Contract finished
second with 11 seats. The remaining eight seats were distributed among three
opposition groups.
In line with the power-sharing deal, the new Gyumri council appointed the
Balasanian Bloc’s Vardges Samsonian as mayor and two Civil Contract members as
deputy mayors.
In a statement, Pashinian’s party said both vice-mayors will step down because
it has decided to end its alliance with the Balasanian Bloc. It said vaguely
that Civil Contract does not want to be part of what it called “shady
governance.”
Armenia - Vardges Samsonian attends a public discussion in Gyumri, October 15,
2019.
The statement did not clarify whether the party will try to oust Samsonian
through a vote of no confidence or force a fresh election in Gyumri. Civil
Contract representatives in Yerevan said the party will reveal its further steps
during a news conference on December 11.
The Balasanian Bloc and Samsonian did not immediately react to the development.
A spokeswoman for the Gyumri mayor told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the bloc
will make a statement in the coming days.
The three other groups represented in the city council also did not rush to
officially comment on Civil Contract’s move. One of them, the Zartonk bloc,
controls four seats in the council. Its leader, Vartevan Hakobian, did not rule
out the possibility of teaming up with Civil Contract or the Balasanian Bloc.
Armenia - A session of the municipal council of Gyumri, February 6, ,2023.
Narek Mirzoyan, a council member affiliated with former President Serzh
Sarkisian’s Republican Party, accused Armenia’s political leadership of seeking
to “destabilize” local communities run by elected opposition mayors. Mirzoyan
pointed to Tuesday’s controversial ouster of the head of a major community in
neighboring Lori province comprising the town of Alaverdi and two dozen other
towns and villages.
The mayor, Arkadi Tamazian, lost his narrow majority in the Alaverdi council
after one of its members representing his Aprelu Yerkir party defected to Civil
Contract in July. Pashinian’s party capitalized on the defection to replace
Tamazian by its local leader amid serious procedural violations alleged by the
Armenian opposition and some civil society members. Hundreds of police officers
were deployed in Alaverdi on Tuesday to help the party install the new mayor.
Levon Barseghian, a veteran civic activist based in Gyumri, linked the end of
the local power-sharing arrangement to the Alaverdi power grab, saying that
Pashinian and his political team are no longer willing to tolerate opposition
control of local governments across Armenia. He said they may now use “promises,
blackmail or political bribes” to try to co-opt other members of the Gyumri
council and gain a majority there.
“Everyone must bear in mind yesterday’s events in Alaverdi,” Barseghian told
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Yerevan Chided For Snubbing Russian-Mediated Peace Talks
North Macedonia - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shares a word with
spokesperson Maria Zakharova at a news conference, during the OSCE Ministerial
Council meeting in Skopje, December 1, 2023.
Russia on Wednesday rebuked Armenia for ignoring its recent offers to organize
more negotiations with Azerbaijan and warned that Yerevan’s current preference
of Western mediation may spell more trouble for the Armenian people.
“We have sent invitations to the [two] countries to meet in Moscow and on the
sidelines of multilateral negotiations in third countries,” said Maria
Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. “Baku has always confirmed
to us their readiness to hold such negotiations. Unfortunately, we cannot say
the same about our Armenian partners. Perhaps they believe that their new
advisers from Paris, Washington and Brussels will be able to offer something
more interesting, better, more effective.”
Zakharova said that Armenian-Azerbaijani summits organized by the European Union
in October 2022 and May 2023 did not end well for the Armenian side.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian unconditionally recognized Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh during those summits. Moscow claims that he
thus legitimized Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive that forced
Karabakh’s entire population to flee to Armenia.
“There may be a repeat of that,” Zakharova told a news briefing. “Now, posing as
its best friends, they [the West] will give Armenia advice that will then lead
to another surprise.”
“We really don’t want the people of Armenia to be again deceived by their
purported Western friends,” added the Russian official.
Spain - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and
French President Emmanuel Macron in Granada, October 5, 2023.
The Armenian government has denounced Moscow for its failure to prevent, stop or
even condemn the Azerbaijani military operation. Pashinian said in October that
Russian peacekeepers were “unable or unwilling to ensure the security of the
Karabakh Armenians” contrary to the terms of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that
stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
EU Council President Charles Michel similarly charged that “Russia has betrayed
the Armenian population” of Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani takeover of the region deepened a rift between Yerevan and
Moscow. Pashinian accused the Russians of not honoring their security
commitments to Armenia, while the Russian Foreign Ministry said that he is
systematically “destroying” Russian-Armenian relations.
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.