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
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