Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will leave for France on May 12 for a working visit, Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign affairs reports.
Minister Nalbandian is expected to have meetings with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayraul, other high-ranking officials.
On April 30, 1991, 25 years ago, the operation “Ring” began with a massive shelling of Getashen and Martunashen, which became a prelude to the subsequent full-scale military aggression of Azerbaijan against the Nagorno Karabakh Republic. During the operation, the Armenian villages were at first surrounded by the interior forces of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Soviet Army. And afterwards, the Azerbaijani OMON and militia entered those villages under the pretext of âpassport checksâ, but in fact for murder, robbery, terror against the Armenian population, followed by deportation.
The operation “Ring” became the continuation of a series of Armenian pogroms and ethnic cleansing in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad and other settlements of Azerbaijan, as well as in the villages of Northern Artsakh in 1988-1991, which were intended to strangle at its birth the national liberation struggle of the Armenians of Artsakh and deprive them of their homeland. The Azerbaijani authorities did not conceal that they considered the operation “Ring” as the beginning of a large-scale deportation of all Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh.
As a result of the operation, during which tanks, combat helicopters and artillery were used, more than two dozen villages of Northern Artsakh and Shahumyan, Hadrut and Shushi regions were completely devastated and destroyed. Almost 10 thousand people were deported, more than 100 killed and several hundred taken hostage. The fate of many of them still remains unknown.
25 years later, on the night of April 2, 2016, the Azerbaijani authorities unleashed yet another aggression against the NKR, which as in 1991, was accompanied by numerous violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes committed against the civilians and soldiers of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, including targeted shelling of peaceful settlements, killings of civilians, as well as the mutilation and ill-treatment of the dead bodies.
However, both in 1991, and now all the attempts of the Azerbaijani authorities to intimidate and break the people of Artsakh, to suppress their strive for freedom and, eventually, to deprive them of their homeland, resulted in a complete failure.
Azerbaijan’s criminal behavior only strengthens the determination of the people of Artsakh to build and develop their independent and free state as the guarantor of its security and peaceful existence. Acknowledgment by the international community of this fact, and, as a result of it, the international recognition of the NKR will put an end to the ongoing attempts of Azerbaijan to destroy Artsakh and eliminate its people, and ensure peace and security in the region.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonâs visit to the South Caucasus, including Armenia has been postponed, the Organizationâs office in Armenia said.
âThe Secretary-General has a keen interest in the South Caucasus region so his visit will be rescheduled,â Officer-in-Charge at UN Department of Public Information Armineh Haladjian said.
It was earlier reported that Ban would arrive in Armenia on April 25 as part of his official visit to the South Caucasus countries.
Two Russian military pilots have died after their helicopter crashed near the central Syrian city of Homs, the BBC reports.
The aircraft, an M-28H attack helicopter, was not shot at, Russia’s defence ministry said.
The crash happened in the early hours of Tuesday, the ministry said. The bodies were recovered and brought to Russia’s Hmeimim air base.
Russia joined the Syrian conflict in September, launching air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
Russia will continue delivering weapons to Azerbaijan as its strategic partner under existing contracts, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday, TASS.
The Russian vice-premier thus commented on a journalistsâ request to comment on a statement by the Armenian President that Russia had supplied a large amount of weapons to Azerbaijan and specify if Russia planned to continue these deliveries.
“Everything is done in compliance with the contracts. Both countries [Armenia and Azerbaijan] are our strategic partners,” Rogozin said.
Asbarez – The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, issued a declaration Sunday condemning Azerbaijan for violating the Nagorno-Karabakh cease-fire, calling it âa serious violation of international law.
The Organization of American States is the worldâs oldest regional organization, dating back to the First International Conference of American States, held in Washington, D.C., in 1889. The moderns iteration was established in 1948 in Bogota, Colombia,
âThe OAS brings together all 35 independent states of the Americas and constitutes the main political, juridical, and social governmental forum in the Hemisphere,â explained the organizationâs website.
Below is the complete text of the declaration
Declaration of the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, regarding recent events in Nagorno Karabakh
April 3, 2016
Stability and peace, and the achievement of peaceful solutions to conflicts between nations are values that go beyond our hemisphere.
Therefore, the use of military action by Azerbaijan is particularly serious because it constitutes a manifest violation of the ceasefire established in 1994 as well as well as a violation of the principle of good faith negotiations in the framework of the Minsk Group.
We condemn the serious violation of the principles of international law.
Moreover, taking civilian objectives as military targets in these attacks is a complete violation of the most basic rules governing armed conflict. These practices must be banished.
Any act of violence to resolve a territorial dispute is inadmissible and when such acts of violence cause civilian deaths they are acts of barbarism.
We urge the Azeri authorities to resume meetings have been postponed with Minsk Group authorities.
The basic principles for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh are based on the Helsinki Final Act (1975), and are:
â The non-use of force,
â Territorial integrity as well as
â Equal rights and
-the self-determination of peoples.
We demand the fullest respect for these principles.
Terrorism in Syria and Iraq is receiving direct support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France and the United Kingdom, Syrian President Bashar Assad told
“Terrorism â thatâs the real problem. We must fight it on the international level, because terrorism affects not only Syria. Terrorism exists in Iraq. It is directly supported by Turkey. It is directly supported by the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia, as well as a number of Western states, especially France and the United Kingdom,” Assad said.
“As far as other states go, they are watching, observing. No serious work on this issue is being conducted from their side. I think that with regard to this questions, the problem far larger than the problem of the actual figures,” he added.
Syrian refugees will begin returning home when they see hope for improvement, Syrian President Bashar Assad told Sputnik.
“Weâve started infrastructure reconstruction work before the crisis is over, to soften, as much as possible, the influence of economic losses and infrastructure damage on the Syrian people and at the same time reduce the migration flow out of the country,” Assad said.
“Maybe some will want to return when they see that there is hope for the amelioration of the situation,” he added.
The president noted that the cause of migration is not only terrorism and the security situation, but also the blockade and Western sanctions introduced against Syria.
“Many people have left safe areas where there is no terrorism because of the life conditions. Citizens can no longer provide themselves with all that is necessary. So we, as a state, must take steps, at least the most basic ones, to improve the economic situation and the service sector in Syria. Thatâs what we are currently doing in terms of reconstruction,” he stated.
Damascus will lean primarily on Russia, China and Iran in rebuilding the country following the war, Syrian President Bashar Assad told Sputnik.
Photo: AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the military to withdraw the “main part” of their forces in Syria, saying they had largely achieved their goals, the BBC reports.
He told a meeting at the Kremlin that the pullout would start on Tuesday.
The comments come amid fresh peace talks in Geneva aimed at resolving the Syrian conflict.
Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Kremlin said he had been informed.
Mr Putin also said that Russia’s Hmeimim airbase and the its port at Tartus would continue to operate as normal.
He said both must be protected “from land, air and sea”.
“Our bases â the naval base in Tartus and the airbase at the Khmeimim airfield â will operate in a routine mode. They are to be safely protected from the land, from the sea and from air,” he told the defense and foreign ministers, according to TASS.
Those Russian servicemen who will stay in Syria will be engaged in monitoring the ceasefire regime, Putin added.
The Russian president said he hopes the start of the withdrawal of Russian troops will become a good motivation for launching negotiations between political forces of that country and instructed the foreign minister to intensify Russiaâs participation in organization of peace process in Syria.
“I hope todayâs decision will be a good signal for all conflicting parties. I hope it will sizably increase trust of all participants in the process,” the president said.  “I ask the Russian Foreign Ministry to intensify Russiaâs participation in organizing the peace process to solve the Syrian problem,” he added.
Poland has accused Russia of downing a Polish presidential jet in 2010 in what it called an act of “terrorism,” sparking an immediate retort on Monday from Moscow, AFP reports.
“We can say that we were the first great victim of the terrorism we now see playing out before our eyes,” Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said, according to a transcript released Monday of a weekend university lecture.
The crash killed then president Lech Kaczynski and 95 other mostly senior officials in what is regarded as Poland’s worst peacetime disaster.
The minister also alleged the crash was orchestrated in reaction to Poland’s 2009 request to define as “genocide” the World War II Soviet massacre of Polish officers in Russia’s western Katyn forest.
“There is no doubt about the fact that what happened … was meant to deprive Poland of a leadership that was moving our nation toward independence,” Macierewicz added.
Moscow responded immediately to the minister’s allegations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling them “unfounded, biased and having nothing to do with real circumstances of this plane crash.”
A member of the Civic Platform opposition party, Rafal Trzaskowski, also dismissed Macierewicz’s allegations as “terrifying”.
“If the defense minister in some way accuses a state of terrorism, we can only be terrified, because one does not leave acts of terrorism without a response,” the former deputy foreign minister told reporters.
The crash occurred as a Polish state delegation was en route to memorial ceremonies in Russia’s Katyn forest for thousands of Polish army officers killed by the Soviet secret police in 1940, a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990.
Indonesia issued a tsunami warning on Wednesday after a massive and shallow earthquake struck off the west coast of its island of Sumatra, a region devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami, Reuters reports.
The warning was issued for West Sumatra, North Sumatra and Aceh after the quake of magnitude 7.9, the National Meteorological Agency said, but rescue efforts will be hampered by the darkness that falls early in the tropical archipelago.
The epicenter was 808 km southwest of Padang, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was 10 km deep.
There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, but the shallower a quake, the more likely it is to cause damage. USGS originally put the magnitude at 8.2, and then 8.1, before lowering it to 7.9.
“So far there have been no reports (of damage) yet,” Andi Eka Sakya, an official of the National Meteorological Agency, told TVOne. “In Bengkulu (on southwest coast of Sumatra) they didn’t feel it at all.”
Neighboring Australia issued a tsunami watch for parts of its western coast.