Monday, January 8, 2024
French Ex-PM Quits Armenian Investment Fund
France -- Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin addresses journalists at
Paris courthouse, 14Sep2011
Dominique de Villepin, a former French prime minister, has resigned from the
governing board of an underperforming state fund tasked with attracting foreign
investment in Armenia following a management overhaul initiated by the country’s
government.
Villepin joined the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) two months after it
was set up by the government in May 2019. The ANIF said at the time that the
appointment is part of its efforts to bring together a “world-class Board of
Directors” that will help it achieve its goals. It attracted only one more board
member, Italian investment banking consultant Isidoro Lucciola, however.
The fund’s track record has also been less than impressive. It claims to have
attracted only $210 million in foreign direct investment in the Armenian economy
over the last four-and-a-half years.
Over 95 percent of that money is due to be invested by an Abu Dhabi-based
company contracted in 2021 to build Armenia’s first big solar power plant. The
project appears to have fallen well behind schedule.
In a weekend statement, the ANIF announced that the Ministry of Economy
appointed three new board members, all of them Armenian government officials,
who promptly voted to fire the fund’s executive director, David Papazian. One of
those officials, Deputy Economy Minister Ani Ispirian, also replaced Villepin as
boar chairperson.
The statement gave no reason for these moves. It said that both Villepin, who
had served as France’s prime minister from 2005-2007, and Lucciola resigned as
board members “after this decision of the Ministry of Economy.” The two foreign
members of the ANIF’s Investment Committee, Khaled Helioui and Michael Thompson,
also tendered their resignations.
The Ministry of Economy has not yet commented on this personnel changes or the
future of the ANIF’s operations.
The current Armenian government has attracted few large-scale Western
investments despite claiming to have eliminated “systemic” corruption and
created a level playing field for all businesses.
It has also helped to effectively disrupt a multimillion-dollar gold mining
project launched by a British-American company, Lydian International, a decade
ago. The company invested $370 million in the massive Amulsar gold deposit and
planned to start mining operations there in late 2018.
Those plans were thwarted after several dozen environmental protesters started
blocking all roads leading to Amulsar following the 2018 “velvet revolution” in
the country. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government did not revoke Lydian’s
mining licenses. But it also refrained from using force to end the blockade.
Lydian filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada in late 2019 before being
restructured. Its new owners and Pashinian’s government reached in February 2023
an agreement to revive the project. They said the company needs to raise $250
million for finishing the construction of mining and smelting facilities at
Amulsar and installing other equipment there.
In 2022, the government controversially rejected a $300 million bid by a
consortium of French companies to build a big ski resort on the slopes of
Armenia’s highest mountain, Aragats. It approved instead a more modest project
proposed by an obscure Russian-Armenian businessman for the same location. The
project has still not been implemented.
Armenia-Azerbaijan Talks Still In Limbo
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Sargis Khandanian attends a parliament session in Yerevan, September
13, 2021.
Armenia has received no “concrete” proposal yet from Azerbaijan to hold direct
negotiations at the border between the two countries, a senior Armenian lawmaker
insisted on Monday.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on December 28 that Baku has
proposed such a meeting between him and his Armenian counterpart Ararat
Mirzoyan. The Armenian government has still not publicly responded to Bayramov’s
statement.
“I think that no such proposal with a concrete venue and date [of the meeting]
has been made to Armenia yet,” Sargis Khandanian, the chairman of the Armenian
parliament committee on foreign relations, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “When
there is such a proposal Armenia will decide whether to accept or reject it. We
can’t regard public statements as concrete proposals.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been scheduled to host Bayramov and
Mirzoyan in Washington on November 20 for further negotiations on an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Baku cancelled the meeting in protest against
what it called pro-Armenian statements made by a senior U.S. State Department
official.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev,
said on December 19 that Washington must reconsider its “one-sided approach” to
the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict before it can mediate more peace talks.
Louis Bono, a U.S. special envoy for the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks, was in
Yerevan on Monday, meeting with Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s
Security Council. Grigorian’s office gave few details of their talks.
Hajiyev declared last week that Baku and Yerevan do not need third-party
mediation in order to negotiate the peace treaty. “We are not against honest
mediation in principle but prefer direct discussions,” he told a German
newspaper.
Khandanian signaled that the Armenian side continues to prefer Western-mediated
talks to direct contacts sought by Baku.
“We will be happy if any party, any mediator, who already has experience in
organizing negotiations, initiates them,” he said.
Khandanian added that the success of the peace process depends on Aliyev
agreeing to formalize the key parameters of the peace treaty on which he and
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian orally agreed during their 2022 and 2023
meetings in Brussels. Those include mutual explicit recognition of each other’s
borders.
Armenian analysts have suggested that Baku does not want Western mediation
anymore because it is reluctant to sign the kind of agreement that would
preclude Azerbaijani territorial claims to Armenia.
Yerevan has said, at least until now, that the two sides should use Soviet
military maps printed in the 1970s as a basis for delimiting the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Its position has been backed by the European Union
but rejected by the Azerbaijani side.
Iran Reaffirms Opposition To ‘Geopolitical Changes’ In South Caucasus
Iran - Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani speaks in Tehran,
August 11, 2022.
Iran reiterated its strong opposition to “geopolitical changes” in the South
Caucasus on Monday after a Turkish government minister said that an
extraterritorial corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave and
Turkey through Armenia should be opened by 2029.
“We are making a lot of efforts to establish peace, stability, and security in
the regional countries,” Nasser Kanaani, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman,
was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. “We emphasize that
developing transit cooperation cannot be a basis for geopolitical changes and
violation of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of countries.”
Kanaani responded to weekend comments by Turkey’s Transport and Infrastructure
Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu about the so-called “Zangezur corridor.” Uraloglu
said that Turkey and Azerbaijan are now building their respective sections of
the highway and railway that would pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian
province bordering Iran.
“The whole process of creating this corridor will take five years. So I think
that we will complete all work in 2028,” he added, according to Turkish media.
Iran has repeatedly warned against attempts to strip it of the common border and
transport links with Armenia. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reportedly told a
visiting Azerbaijani official in October 2023 that the corridor sought by Baku
is “resolutely opposed by Iran.”
The Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei likewise made this
clear to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when they met in Tehran in 2022.
Erdogan complained about Iran’s stance on the issue after visiting Baku a year
later. He claimed that unlike Tehran, Yerevan does not object to the idea of the
“Zangezur corridor.” The Armenian government has rejected the Azerbaijani and
Turkish demands on numerous occasions.
A senior Azerbaijani official, Hikmet Hajiyev, said last October that the
corridor “has lost its attractiveness for us” and that Baku is now planning to
“do this with Iran instead.” But he appeared to backtrack on that statement in a
newspaper interview published last week. Hajiyev said that the planned
construction of a new road and railway connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan via
Iran does not mean that Azerbaijan has abandoned the idea of “Zangezur corridor.”
Hajiyev confirmed that Baku wants to make sure that people and cargos travelling
to and from Nakhichevan are not checked by Armenian border guards or customs
officers. He claimed that this would not violate Armenia’s territorial integrity.
Karabakh To Stay On Armenian Church Agenda
Armenia - Catholicos Garegin II leads Christmass mass at the St. Gregory the
Illuminator Cathedral in Yerevan, January 6, 2024.
Catholicos Garegin II offered solace to Nagorno-Karabakh’s displaced residents
at the weekend, saying that the Armenian Apostolic Church will continue to fight
for their rights and will never forget their depopulated homeland.
The supreme head of the church also urged Armenians to close the ranks to
counter “Azerbaijan's expansionist ambitions and encroachments” as he celebrated
a Christmas mass at the Saint Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Yerevan.
“Let us eliminate artificially created gaps between us, let us live with love
for each other so that the vineyards of our nation and homeland will be
brightened with heavenly blessing,” he declared in his Christmas message read
out during the liturgy boycotted by Armenia’s leadership.
Garegin said that those divisions, coupled with “complicated geopolitical
events,” contributed to Azerbaijan’s September 2023 recapture of Karabakh that
forced the region’s practically entire population to flee to Armenia.
“In such manner, Artsakh remained alone during the days of disasters. Armenians
from Artsakh were forcibly displaced from their homeland and became homeless,”
he said.
Garegin went on to praise the more than 120,000 Karabakh Armenian refugees for
coping with their ordeal with “heroic and unbeatable spirit and dignity.”
NAGORNO-KARABAKH - Men examine a bomb crater near the Holy Savior Cathedral
after shelling by Azerbaijan's forces in Shushi, October 29, 2020
“Artsakh will never become a past for us,” he said. “We will continue to cherish
it in our hearts and souls, making every effort to protect the rights of Artsakh
Armenians. Stay full of hope, God will provide you and give blessings for the
hardships you have endured. You are not alone in your difficulties.”
The Catholicos similarly spoke of a “relentless pain of immense losses in our
hearts” resulting from “the occupation and depopulation of Artsakh” in his New
Year’s Eve speech which was controversially not aired by Armenian state
television run by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s loyalists. By contrast,
Pashinian made no direct mention of the loss of Karabakh in his address to the
nation.
Pashinian as well as members of his government and political team were again
conspicuously absent from the Christmas mass, underscoring their discord with
the Armenian Apostolic Church. The tensions rose further in October when Garegin
blamed Pashinian for Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Karabakh.
The church earlier repeatedly condemned Pashinian for recognizing Azerbaijani
sovereignty over Karabakh. The premier accused the church of meddling in
politics in May 2023, prompting a scathing response from Garegin’s office.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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