Friday, March 3, 2023
Baku Accused Of Ignoring UN Court Order On Karabakh Corridor
Nagorno-Karabakh - Customers visit an almost empty food store in Stepanakert,
January 7, 2023.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Friday urged the international community to
press Azerbaijan to comply with a UN court order to reopen the sole road
connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
In a “provisional measure” requested by Yerevan, the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) acknowledged on February 22 that the land link was “disrupted” by
Azerbaijani protesters more than two months ago. It said Baku should “take all
measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and
cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.”
The Azerbaijani government afterwards stood by its claims that traffic through
the lifeline road was never blocked.
“Unfortunately, despite the decision made by the International Court of Justice,
Azerbaijan has still not reopened the Lachin corridor,” Pashinian told members
of the German parliament’s foreign relations committee during a visit to Berlin.
“I think that this is a situation that needs to be discussed at the
international level because it is unacceptable to leave the decision of the ICJ
without reaction amid the continuing humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh,”
he said. “An international response is imperative.”
On Thursday, the Vienna-based Permanent Council of the Organization Security and
Cooperation in Europe discussed the matter at a meeting initiated by Armenia.
Armen Papikian, the Armenian ambassador to the OSCE, accused Baku of showing
“contempt” for the ICJ order.
Papikian’s U.S. opposite number, Michael Carpenter, welcomed the order and
reiterated Washington’s calls for the lifting of the Azerbaijani blockade.
“Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken raised this in his engagement with Prime
Minister Pashinian and with President Aliyev in Munich on February 18,”
Carpenter said during the Permanent Council meeting. “The Secretary underscored
the need for free and open commercial and private transit through the Lachin
Corridor, and we reiterate that today.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also called on Azerbaijan to comply
with the UN court’s decision.
Russian Group To Build Two Power Plants In Armenia
Armenia - Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetian inaugurates an energy
lab at the National Polytechnic University in Yerevan, 5Jun2017.
A Russian business conglomerate owned by Armenian-born billionaire Samvel
Karapetian announced on Friday plans to invest at least $150 million in the
construction of two thermal power plants in Armenia.
In a statement, Karapetian’s Tashir Group said one of those gas-fired plants
will be built near Noyemberian, a small town close to the Armenian-Georgian
border.
The 126-megawatt facility will generate electricity not only for Armenia but
also Georgia, it said, adding that Tashir will upgrade dozens of kilometers of
high-voltage transmission lines in both countries for that purpose.
“Work on the thermal power plant will start this year and last for about two
years,” said the statement.
It said the other, much smaller plant will be built in the central Armenian town
of Hrazdan by the end of 2024.
Both facilities will be equipped with German turbines that will “reduce
emissions into the atmosphere and minimize the impact on the environment,”
according to Tashir.
Karapetian’s group headquartered in Moscow already owns Armenia’s largest
thermal power plant also located in Hrazdan. The obsolete plant has been
reportedly decommissioned in recent years.
Armenia’s electricity distribution network and second most important
hydroelectric complex are also owned by Tashir. Speaking at a Russian-Armenian
business held in Yerevan in 2021, Karapetian pledged to invest up to $600
million in the Armenian energy sector in the coming years.
Karapetian, 57, was born and raised in Armenia. He moved to Russia in the early
1990s, making a huge fortune there in the next two decades.
His Russian conglomerate comprises over a hundred firms engaged in construction,
manufacturing, retail trade and other services. With total assets estimated by
the Forbes magazine at $3.8 billion, Karapetian is apparently the richest ethnic
Armenian in the world.
Karabakh Lauds Germany’s Scholz
• Karlen Aslanian
• Gayane Saribekian
Nagorno-Karabakh - Thousands rally in Stepanakert to protest Azerbaijan's
blockade of Karabakh's only land link to Armenia, December 25, 2022.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership on Friday praised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
for advocating an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal that would respect the
Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination.
Scholz called for a “peaceful settlement based on the territorial integrity of
Armenia and Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh citizens’ right to
self-determination” after holding talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on
Thursday.
“These principles are equally applicable,” he told a joint news conference in
Berlin.
“We welcome Olaf Scholz’s statement that the conflict should be settled
peacefully on the basis of equal principles of [territorial] integrity & right
to self-determination of the Nagorno-Karabakh people,” tweeted Arayik
Harutiunian, the Karabakh president. “Settlement is impossible without fully
considering our fundamental/collective rights.”
Peace plans jointly drafted by the United States, Russia and France prior to the
2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war upheld the Karabakh Armenians’ right to
self-determination, which would be exercised through a referendum.
Successive Armenian governments for decades championed that principle in peace
talks with Azerbaijan. Pashinian effectively stopped doing that a year ago. He
and other senior Armenian officials have since spoken instead of the need to
protect “the rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Germany - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian shake hands during a news conference in Berlin, Mar 2, 2023.
Pashinian repeated that phrase and did not comment on Scholz’s remark when he
addressed the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think-tank,
after his talks with the chancellor. He again called for an “international
mechanism” for discussions between Baku and Stepanakert but shed little light on
that negotiating format sought by Yerevan.
At the same time, Pashinian deplored the “growing aggressiveness of Azerbaijan
towards Nagorno-Karabakh.” He accused Baku of seeking to subject Karabakh’s
population to “ethnic cleansing,” citing the Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin
corridor connecting the region to Armenia.
Karabakh’s leaders and main political groups have repeatedly criticized
Pashinian over the past year. They were mostly recently irked by his January 10
claim that the international community has always regarded Karabakh as an
integral part of Azerbaijan and that the Armenian government must only deal with
Armenia’s problems.
Pashinian’s political opponents in Armenia have been even more critical,
accusing him of planning to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. The
Armenian opposition staged daily street protests in Yerevan for several
consecutive weeks after the prime minister signaled in April 2022 his readiness
to “lower the bar” on Karabakh’s future status.
Russian, Armenian FMs Meet In India
India - Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Ararat Mirzoyan of Armenia
meet in New Delhi, March 3, 2023.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a quicker implementation of
Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Moscow during talks with his
Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan held in India on Friday.
The two ministers met in New Delhi on the sidelines of a conference on
international security attended by many foreign leaders.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said they discussed Russian-Armenian relations as
well as “regional issues” and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in particular. It
said Lavrov stressed the importance of “intensifying efforts on all tracks of
the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization in accordance with the agreements between
the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
The Armenian Foreign Ministry likewise reported that Lavrov and Mirzoyan
reviewed progress towards the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations,
the restoration of transport links between the two South Caucasus states and the
demarcation of their long border. Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of the sole
road connecting Karabakh to Armenia was also on the agenda, it said in a
statement.
The Russian readout of the talks made no mention of the blockade. Russia has
repeatedly called for its lifting as have the United States and other Western
powers.
Visiting Baku earlier this week, Lavrov also indicated Moscow’s opposition to
Azerbaijan’s desire to set up a checkpoint at the Lachin corridor. He said this
would run counter to the 2020 ceasefire agreement that placed the corridor under
the control of Russian peacekeepers.
Azerbaijan -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Azerbaijani
counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov hold a joint press conference in Baku, February 28,
2023.
Speaking after talks with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, Lavrov
also reaffirmed his readiness to host talks between his Armenian and Azerbaijani
counterparts. He noted that Yerevan “has not yet given its final consent.”
The three ministers were scheduled to meet in Moscow in late December. The
Armenian side cancelled the meeting in protest against the Azerbaijani blockade.
Moscow criticized the move.
Russian-Armenian relations have soured in recent months because of what Yerevan
sees as Russia’s reluctance to support its main regional ally locked in the
protracted conflict with Azerbaijan. Armenian leaders have also accused the
Russians of doing little to unblock the Lachin corridor.
Russian officials have strongly denied that. They have chided Yerevan for asking
the European Union to send monitors to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has claimed that the EU’s monitoring mission
launched last month is part of the West’s efforts of squeeze Russia out of the
South Caucasus and use the Karabakh conflict in the standoff over Ukraine.
The ministry said that Lavrov’s latest meeting with Mirzoyan took place “in a
friendly and trusting atmosphere.”
While in New Delhi, the Armenian minister also met with the EU’s foreign and
security policy chief, Josep Borrell. His press office said both men praised the
recent deployment of some 100 EU monitors to Armenian border areas.
The EU’s top official, Charles Michel, is now understood to be trying to host a
fresh Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Brussels.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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