Monday, U.S., French Envoys Explore Renewed Karabakh Talks Armenia -- The U.S. and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and other diplomats meet with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, December 14, 2020. U.S. and French mediators have visited Baku and Yerevan to explore the possibility of resuming Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks following the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The two co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Groups traveled to the region to follow up on a December 3 statement by Russia’s and France’s foreign ministers and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun calling on Armenia and Azerbaijan to “take advantage of the current ceasefire to negotiate a lasting and sustainable peace agreement.” The statement also urged the conflicting parties to meet the U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group and “commit to substantive negotiations to resolve all outstanding issues in accordance with an agreed timetable.” The Russian co-chair, Igor Popov, did not join his French and U.S. counterparts, Stephane Visconti and Andrew Schofer, in meeting with Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s leaders. Moscow gave no reason for Popov’s conspicuous absence. It was represented at the talks by Russian diplomats based in Baku and Yerevan. According to an Armenian government statement, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian discussed with the visiting mediators on Monday ways of restarting peace process more than one month after Russia brokered an agreement to stop the war in Karabakh. The statement cited Pashinian as saying that the United States, Russia and France should resume their joint efforts to achieve a “comprehensive settlement” of the Karabakh conflict. He stuck to the official Armenian line that Karabakh’s predominantly ethnic Armenian population must be able to exercise its right to self-determination as part of that settlement. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Schofer and Visconti on Saturday. He reiterated that Baku essentially resolved the long-running conflict during the six-week war which resulted in sweeping Azerbaijani territorial gains. Aliyev again blamed Pashinian for the war, saying that the Armenian leader “ruined the negotiations with provocative actions and statements.” He also lambasted the Minsk Group, saying that it has failed to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict. IMF Approves $37 Million Loan Tranche To Armenia U.S. -- An exterior view of the building of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the IMG logo, is seen in Washington, March 27, 2020 The International Monetary Fund has disbursed a fresh $37 million installment of a loan designed to help Armenia cope with the coronavirus pandemic and economic consequences. The loan tranche brought to about $332 million the total amount of funds allocated to the country under the IMF’s Stand-By Arrangement worth $443 million. The IMF approved the lending program in May as the Armenian economy plunged into recession after three years of robust growth. The decision came shortly after the Armenian government announced plans to borrow around $540 million to offset a major shortfall in tax revenues and finance its efforts to contain the pandemic. Armenia’s economic woes were compounded by the war in Nagorno-Karabakh that broke out in late September and was stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire six weeks later. In a weekend statement announcing the disbursement, the IMF said that the Armenian economy is on course to contract by more than 7 percent this year seeing as “the full impact of the twin crises is still unfolding.” “The Fund’s financial support will help Armenia meet these challenges, including the urgent social and economic implications of COVID-19 pandemic,” read the statement. “The authorities have responded proactively to mitigate the socioeconomic and health effects of these shocks,” it quoted Tao Zhang, the IMF’s deputy managing director, as saying. “The authorities’ 2021 budget is appropriate given weak growth and is embedded in a clear medium-term fiscal strategy. The authorities remain committed to taking measures to safeguard debt sustainability as a result of which public debt is expected to fall to around 60 percent of GDP over the medium-term,” added Zhang. In its draft budget debated by the Armenian parliament, the government projected a GDP growth rate of 3.2 percent for next year. The IMF expects the Armenian economy to expand by only 1 percent in 2021. Its statement said in this regard that the country’s economic outlook is “contingent upon the anticipated global recovery and domestic reform implementation.” The Armenian currency, the dram, has weakened against the U.S. dollar by almost 6 percent in the last two months. Pashinian Again Rules Out Resignation Armenia -- Amenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses the nation, Yerevan, November 14, 2020. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian continued to reject on Monday opposition calls for his resignation backed by President Armen Sarkissian, the Armenian Apostolic Church and public figures in Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora. “Rumors are being constantly circulated about my resignation, even though I have made clear that I will give up the status bestowed on me by the people only on the basis of credible results of an expression of the people’s will,” Pashinian said in a televised address to the nation. “As long as there has been no such expression of the will I will continue to perform my duties.” “I want to again emphasize that the number one challenge now is to stabilize the security environment around Armenia, and we are going to consistently follow that path,” he added. Pashinian did not explicitly express his readiness for snap parliamentary elections, also demanded by opposition forces blaming him for the Armenian side’s defeat in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Instead, he again accused them of seeking “leave the people out” of political processes in the country. One of Pashinian’s close associates indicated last week that the ruling political team is ready to discuss with the Armenian opposition the possibility of fresh elections. Opposition parties said afterwards that they have received no such offers from the government yet. ARMENIA -- A placard with an image of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is seen lying on the ground among coins during a rally to demand his resignation, December 10, 2020. Most of them want of them want the elections to be held within a year by a new and interim government. The idea has also been advocated by Sarkissian. “If you have a crisis, if you lose a war … you have to start anew. Otherwise the defeat will become an ordinary occurrence,” the president told CivilNet.am on Friday. “You don’t need 200,000 or 300,000 [protesting] on the streets to have a crisis. You just need to see it. Therefore, the first step must be the resignation of the government and the formation of a [transitional] government.” Sarkissian met over the weekend with Vazgen Manukian, a veteran politician nominated as a caretaker prime minister by a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties holding anti-government protests in Yerevan and other parts of the country. The protests were due to continue later on Monday. Manukian was also received by Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Garegin and other top clergymen of the church too have urged Pashinian to hand over power to an interim government tasked with holding the elections. Pashinian came under fresh opposition fire on Saturday as Azerbaijani troops seized two more villages in Nagorno-Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district which was mostly occupied by them during the six-week war. NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Russian soldiers of the peacekeeping force man a checkpoint on a road outside Stepanakert, November 26, 2020 Russian peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh rushed to the scene of the fighting in the following hours. “The situation in that area has been normalized,” their commander, Major-General Rustam Muradov, stated on Sunday. Pashinian discussed the situation with members of Armenia’s Security Council and other officials at an emergency meeting held on Sunday. He accused Azerbaijan of violating key terms of a Russian-mediated ceasefire agreement that stopped the war on November 10. Citing the same agreement, he also said he expects the Russian peacekeepers to help place the two Hadrut villages back under Karabakh Armenian control. In his televised remarks aired the following morning, the Armenian premier accused his political opponents of disseminating false rumors about additional Armenian territorial concessions made to Azerbaijan in a bid to spread panic and discredit his government. He claimed that the anti-government campaign of “information terrorism” is partly “managed from abroad” but did not elaborate. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.