16:37,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. The City Hall of Sayaxché, Guatemala has officially recognized the right to self-determination of the Armenians of Artsakh and is supporting the creation of a free and sovereign state.
Earlier on October 21, Guatemala lawmaker Carlos Lopez had released a statement, noting that he recognized the right to self determination of the Armenians of Artsakh.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
16:12,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 23, ARMENPRESS. 6539 Azeri troops have been killed in action since the attacks on Artsakh began on September 27, the Armenian official Unified InfoCenter reported.
Azeri military losses also include 206 UAVs, 16 helicopters, 24 warplanes, 588 armored equipment and 4 TOS launchers.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
By Gevorg Tosunyan
A proposal was submitted to Armenia’s National Assembly to provide an opportunity for debt relief for those killed or disabled as a result of the war in Karabakh that began on September 27. The issue was discussed during a special meeting of the assembly on October 21.
"The government will bear part of the financial burden of unearned income as a result of the debt forgiveness proposal," said Deputy Minister of Finance Arman Poghosyan, who presented the bill. Although this is an encouragement for banks to move forward with debt forgiveness, the final decision to do so remains under the bank's discretion.
"We want this to be perceived as a real opportunity, and a willingness. Firstly, I am convinced that this is a special situation, and secondly, it does not make sense to keep these supposed assets in the banks' balance sheets because the banks realize that it is not possible to get those loans back. The most rational decision should be to write them off and release those people from their credit obligations," said Poghosyan.
According to the deputy minister, the discussion of the program illustrated that banks and credit organizations are willing to offer loan forgiveness.
"There are banks that did not even wait for the adoption of this law. I believe we will have a law that will benefit and provide abundant opportunity for debt relief,” the deputy minister of finance noted.
The parliament also discussed a separate tax relief bill. It is proposed that there should not be taxes levied on goods imported by organizations and individuals into Armenia for humanitarian, health, and military purposes. Additionally, the process should be more effective and functional.
The parliament unanimously adopted these proposals in their second session.
The Trump administration has invited Azerbaijan’s foreign minister to the United States for a meeting this week at the same time that Armenia’s foreign minister will be in Washington.
The visits come as the two countries engage in a new military conflict over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan’s minister of foreign affairs, Jeyhun Bayramov, will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Michael (Mike) Richard PompeoPompeo: 'Dangerous' for Twitter to take 'non-viewpoint-neutral' stancePompeo warns any arms sales to Iran will result in sanctions as embargo expiresTrump turns his ire toward Cabinet membersMORE on Friday, the country's foreign ministry said in a statement, with the Azerbaijani ambassador to the U.S. saying the invitation came from the State Department.
“The invitation came from the United States,” the ambassador, Elin Suleymanov, told The Hill.
Politico first reported on Monday that the two ministers would meet with Pompeo on Friday.
Armenia’s ambassador to the U.S. had earlier told The Hill that preparations were being made for Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan’s visit to Washington and that Yerevan is pushing the United States to halt military assistance to Azerbaijan and sanction Turkey for its support of Baku.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a fierce, weeks-long battle along the border between Azerbaijan and the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave within Azerbaijan that is controlled by ethnic Armenians that refer to the territory as Artsakh.
Armenians view Artsakh as part of their historical homeland in the region and self-governance as a right of self-determination. Azerbaijan views Armenia as perpetrating an illegal military occupation of their sovereign territory.
The United States, France and Russia are co-chairs of the Minsk group that has for nearly 30 years tried to mediate a negotiated solution to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the situation periodically devolving into armed conflict.
The most recent fighting, which broke out on Sept. 27, has inflicted hundreds of casualties on the Artsakh Defense Forces, backed by Armenia, and resulted in dozens of civilian deaths in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani military does not publicize its military deaths.
Russia launched two attempts this month for a humanitarian ceasefire with both Azerbaijan and Armenia’s foreign ministers but that has failed to hold — with each side accusing the other of breaking the terms of the deal.
Suleymanov told The Hill that the meeting with Pompeo is expected to address the stalled political negotiations over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh and not necessarily a cessation of hostilities in the region.
“The issue is not the cease-fire, the issue is the resumption of substantive talks based on international law,” Suleymanov said.
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said that the meeting with Pompeo will also include representatives from France and Russia in their capacity as co-chairs of the Minsk group.
Gilad Sade is a photojournalist from Israel and he is currently in Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh covering the ongoing war.
Sade gives his take about the current situation in the region. Through images and stories, the journalist portrays the aftermath of war on the people of Karabakh.
It’s been 22 days that the region has shifted from peace to despair since Azerbaijan started to attack the capital Stepanakert on September 27.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Wednesday that Armenia was trying to attack oil and gas pipelines in Azerbaijan and that the outcome will be severe if Armenians try to take control of them.
"Armenia is trying to attack and take control of our pipelines," Aliyev said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster Habertürk. "If Armenia tries to take control of the pipelines there, I can say that the outcome will be severe for them."
Last week, Armenian forces launched a missile attack on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in the city of Yevlakh.
The BTC pipeline delivers Azerbaijan's light crude oil – mainly from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field – through Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan for export via tankers.
Azerbaijan had described the attack as a "terrorist act" and highlighted the pipeline's important role in Europe's energy security.
Instability in this region has the potential to directly affect the BTC crude oil pipeline, the Southern Natural Gas Pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.
Aliyev also said that Turkey should participate in talks on the Armenian-occupied region of Nagorno-Karabakh and that the conflict cannot be solved without Ankara's involvement.
He added that Azerbaijan has Turkish F-16 jets but that they were not being used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.
Nagorno-Karabakh has seen heavy fighting over the recent weeks which has claimed the lives of 600 people, including civilians. The region is considered by the United Nations and international law to be part of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan has so far liberated more than 20 villages in Nagorno-Karabakh since clashes broke out between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in late September.
The clashes began on Sept. 27 when Armenian forces targeted civilian Azerbaijani settlements and military positions in the region, leading to casualties.
17:25, 8 October, 2020
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 8, ARMENPRESS. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has affirmed that Azerbaijan was the one who initiated the ongoing fighting in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone.
“The Karabakh conflict is very serious now, and that is why our political unity is also very strong. The OSCE MG Co-Chairs have issued a joint statement calling upon the parties for a ceasefire because there are numerous civilian casualties,” the French FM said at the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee. He firmly stressed that it was Azerbaijan who launched the attack.
The French FM said the sides must be interested in establishing ceasefire without preconditions.
“You can’t say “we want ceasefire, but….”, this won’t happen. Hostilities halt, negotiations begin, in order for them to achieve agreement around a specific situation that will enable the sides to live normally,” he said, reminding about Azerbaijan’s precondition voiced days earlier.
Jean-Yves Le Drian had earlier announced that Turkey has interfered from the Azeri side in the Nagorno Karabakh military operations, and threatens to internationalize the conflict.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
22:56, 8 October, 2020
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 8, ARMENPRESS. The situation of one of the tree Russian reporters injured at Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Church is critical, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Facebook page of the Human Rights Defender’s Office of Artsakh.
The reporters were in Ghazanchetsots Church to cover the first Azerbaijani strike against the Church, when they bombed for the second time.
‘’Different citizens and reporters who witnessed the incident say that the strike was followed by an UAV flying over the church for a while, which a bit later struck the church. These facts show that it was visible for the Azerbaijani armed forces that they were striking the church and that there were reporters with badges inside. Therefore, there are no doubts that Azerbaijan deliberately carried out a targeted strike against the reporters and the church. Moreover, fact-finding works showed that the Azerbaijani armed forces also carried out strikes nearby Shushi’s Mosque’’, reads the statement of the Human Rights Defender’s Office.
Strongly condemning the deliberate targeting of reporters and the church by Azerbaijan, the Human Rights Defender of Artsakh assesses it as a war crime and crime against humanity. The Defender urges international human rights organizations to give adequate assessment to the incident and take measures for punishing those responsible.
A number of reporters were injured on October 8 during the bombing of Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, one of them, a Russian journalist, is in critical situation. Doctors of Artsakh are sparing no efforts to save his life.
Earlier two French reporters of Le-Monde had been injured in Martakert. One of them was in critical situation, but doctors of Artsakh were able to save his life.
Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh and Armenia has resulted in 22 civilian victims. Artsakh’s major cities and towns have been under heavy bombardment for days.
Turkey overtly supports Azerbaijan’s aggression. Thousands of jihadist terrorists have been deployed by Turkey in Azerbaijan to fight against Artsakh.
Editing and translating by Tigran Sirekanyan
Asia Times By Kourosh Ziabari October 8, 2020 Ethnic Azerbaijanis who make up 25% of Iran's population are now calling for the 'liberation of Karabakh' RASHT – Tensions flaring up between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the intractable Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, deemed to be Europe’s oldest “frozen war,” have spilled over into the neighboring Iran, which shares borders and longstanding amicable relations with both nations. When the exchange of fire started on September 27 to reignite a three-decade-old battle on the sovereignty of a mountainous enclave both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim to be part of their territory, it was scarcely expected that the skirmish involving two Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe member states would degenerate into ethnic chaos in Iran, which has mostly been preoccupied with its own economic pains and global isolation. But Iran, home to nearly 20 million ethnic Azeris and about 200,000 Armenians, has been shaken by the repercussions of the tussle in South Caucuses and appears to be prodded into taking sides, rowing back from an initial position of neutrality. Ali Rabiei, the spokesperson for the government of Iran, said in a press conference on Tuesday that the official stance of Iran is that Armenia should evacuate the “occupied regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan,” respect its sovereignty and uphold the United Nations Charter. In recent days, widespread protests broke out in some of Iran’s major Azeri-speaking cities including Tabriz, Urmia, Ardabil and Zanjan. Demonstrators called for the “liberation of Karabakh” and voiced anger at rumors that the Islamic Republic had dispatched truckloads of military aid to Armenia. According to some accounts, 60 people have been arrested in these cities. Racially-charged slogans The demonstrations also became a venue for the expression of racially-charged and secessionist sentiments, with some participants chanting slogans decrying Iran’s Persian-speaking majority and other ethnic communities as the nemesis of the Azeri people. In one instance, large groups of protesters in Tabriz chanted “Kurds, Persians and Armenians are the enemies of Azerbaijan.” In a rare move, widely criticized by Iran’s pro-reform newspapers and social media users, representatives of the Supreme Leader in four Azeri-speaking provinces unconditionally threw their weight behind the Republic of Azerbaijan. They emphasized in a joint statement that “there is no doubt that Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan, that it is being occupied and that these territories need to be returned to Azerbaijan.” The four influential clerics – Seyed Mohammad Ali Al-e Hashem, Seyed Hassan Ameli, Ali Khatami and Seyed Mehdi Ghoreishi – attributed their decision to issue the statement to the verses of the Quran and the “philosophy of Islamic Republic” necessitating the “protection of the oppressed.” They also called those Azerbaijani troops and civilians killed in the clashes “martyrs.” Shargh, a major reformist newspaper, warned that the clerics having a political axe to grind in a dispute which is the jurisdiction of Iran’s foreign ministry will “undermine the position of the administration to further the role of an intermediary” between Azerbaijan and Armenia, while giving a pretext to ethnic extremists to stoke sectarianism. Many Iranians have been posting patriotic comments on social media since then, in reaction to what they perceive to be machinations to put Iran’s independence and territorial integrity in jeopardy. Iran’s Azeris Iran’s Azeris, represented in high political offices, large businesses and key economic and social sectors, share cross-border cultural ties with the Republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey, intermarry with families in the region, travel to the two countries frequently, watch Azeri and Turkish movies on satellite TV and some view themselves as successors of a historic Ottoman civilization. In extreme cases, fans of Iran’s football clubs from Azeri-speaking cities have been seen carrying the flags of Azerbaijan and Turkey to the stadiums, to the chagrin of authorities in Tehran. This latent Azeri Turkic nationalism has at times unsettled the Islamic Republic leadership that has been struggling for some 40 years to preserve the territorial integrity of a multi-ethnic country in which minorities of Azeris, Arabs, Kurds, Lurs, Turkmens, Balochs, Armenians and Gilaks make up more than half the population. Emil Aslan, a researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, says Iran’s Azerbaijanis have become increasingly exposed to ethnic nationalism over the past two decades, and it is against this backdrop that they are wading into the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which to them is a largely symbolic cause. “Available evidence suggests that a significant portion of Iran’s urban Azerbaijani community has come to politically side with Azerbaijan in a nationwide process of return to ethnic roots,” he said. “For youth that are more educated, secular and hedge against increasingly strong Persian nationalism, Karabakh has become a cornerstone of their Turkic Azerbaijani nationalism, partly due to their larger exposition to Azerbaijani and Turkish media,” he told Asia Times. Yet Aslan believes a predisposition to independence from Iran or annexation with either Azerbaijan or Turkey is quite uncommon among Iran’s Azeris, even though nationalistic tendencies are markedly powerful. “My experience from fieldwork in Iran’s Azerbaijan (community) suggests that even in the midst of nationalist urban youth, the attitudes toward the idea of Iranian statehood are quite strong, with only a minority, albeit vocal, being in favor of attaining independence from Iran,” he said. “Most wish to coexist with Persians, which is particularly the case amid more religiously-minded Azerbaijanis, who equate Shiite Islam with Iranian statehood,” he said. Professor Brenda Shaffer, a foreign policy specialist and faculty member of the US Naval Postgraduate School, echoed those views, ruling out the unification of Iran’s Azeri-speaking provinces with Azerbaijan or Turkey as a possibility. “While Turkey and Azerbaijan, especially through their TV broadcasts widely viewed among the Azerbaijanis in Iran, are important cultural magnets, I don’t see any meaningful interest of unification with either among the Azerbaijanis in Iran,” she said. “In parallel, Turkey and the Republic of Azerbaijan are interested in the welfare and fulfillment of rights of the Azerbaijanis in Iran, but neither seeks a change in Iran’s borders nor to incorporate the territories populated by the Azerbaijani group,” she told Asia Times. Warning the neighbors But while separatist attitudes might be inconsequential, there are media and political elites in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey who refer to Iran’s Azeri-speaking provinces as “South Azerbaijan,” holding conferences and events in Baku and Istanbul from time to time advocating the separation of these provinces, featuring speakers from Iran and elsewhere. The Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, based in Baku, was founded in 2002 and claims to represent the interests of Iran’s Azeris, seeking to unify Azerbaijanis “living on both sides of the Aras river.” Iran’s Azeris also have their own grievances. They complain about being sometimes belittled by the national media, being the target of racist jokes and not being entitled to use their language for education in schools and universities. Shaffer believes these grievances and the simmering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will not pit Iran’s ethnic groups against each other, even though Tehran’s policies with each of its neighbors can have domestic implications since the country’s ethnic minorities mostly reside in border provinces. “The Azerbaijani community numbers approximately 28 million, while the Armenians number close to 200,000. In Tabriz, which is an almost all Azerbaijani city, there is an Armenian community and the leaders of the protest movement in Tabriz have openly stated that they want no harm to come to this community,” she told Asia Times. It is difficult to predict the outcome of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, especially given that Turkey is openly backing Azerbaijan, and major powers such as Russia and France may also wade in with conflicting interests. Yet Tehran’s role in the fighting may become more explicit with time as it works to moderate the tensions raging in close proximity to its borders. Several rockets and some shelling have been reported to have inadvertently hit Iranian soil since fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia. At least 20 mortar shells have landed in villages of the border city of Aslan Duz in Ardabil Province, while three rockets have fallen inside the villages of Khoda Afarin County, injuring a six-year-old child. Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Hatami stated these mistaken firings are not acceptable and that “necessary and serious warning” was given to both countries to ensure Iran’s territory is not encroached on while they fight.