Author: Emil Karabekian

Armenian President presents Crossroads of Peace project to Iraqi counterpart

Emil Karabekian

 13:49, 22 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. President Vahagn Khachaturyan said he presented to his Iraqi counterpart Abdul Latif Rashid the Crossroads of Peace project at their meeting on November 22 in Yerevan. 

Speaking at a joint press conference with the Iraqi president, the Armenian president said they discussed issues of partnership around regional and international matters.

“We emphasized the need for dialogue around regional security environment and joining efforts in conditions of the processes taking place in the international arena and the resulting challenges. I presented to my respected counterpart the Crossroads of Peace project developed by the Armenian government,” Khachaturyan said.

He said that Armenia is interested in the unblocking of regional economic and transport connections based on the principles of sovereignty, equality, jurisdiction and reciprocity.

During the meeting the presidents also attached importance to strengthening cooperation as part of fighting all manifestations of international terrorism, and making joint efforts aimed at countering illegal migration.

The Crossroads of Peace project is about creating new infrastructures or improving the scope and quality of the existing ones. Armenia is ready to establish five checkpoints on the Armenia-Azerbaijan borders for road infrastructures including in Kayan, Sotk, near Karahunj, near Angeghakot , and Yeraskh. Also, to establish two checkpoints on the Armenia-Turkiye border in Akhurik and Margara for road infrastructures. Armenia is prepared to ensure communications between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye, by restoring four railway sections in the territory of the Republic of Armenia. Armenia is ready to restore the Nrnadzor-Agarak railway section and to establish checkpoints near the borders, to restore the railway section from Yeraskh to the border of Nakhchivan and to establish a checkpoint in Yeraskh, to restore the depleted parts of the railway from Gyumri to the border of Turkiye and to establish a checkpoint in Akhurik. Also, Armenia is prepared to restore the depleted parts of railway from Hrazdan to Kayan and to establish a checkpoint in Kayan. This will create new links between all the countries of the region. The principles of the Crossroads of Peace are: all infrastructures including roads, railways, airways, pipelines, cables and power lines operate under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass; each country, through its state institutions, in its territory ensures border control, customs control and security of the infrastructures, including the passage through its territory of vehicles, cargo and people; All infrastructures can be used for both international and domestic transportation; countries use all the infrastructures on the basis of reciprocity and equality, and in accordance with these principles border and customs controls can be facilitated through mutual consent and agreement. As missing sections of railways and roads are restored and infrastructures unlocked, it will become possible to establish a seamless connection between the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea via a consolidated, regional railway network and via the North-South and East-West roads. The Government of the Republic of Armenia reaffirms its commitment to contribute its share to the region’s peace and stability, and to make practical measures to build the Crossroads of Peace.




Armenian Speaker of Parliament won’t attend CSTO event

Emil Karabekian

 16:10,

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan has said he won’t participate in an upcoming CSTO event scheduled to take place in December.

“I have informed my CSTO colleagues that I will not participate in that given event, and there’s been no answer from them so far and I don’t think there will be. I am sure that the reasons of my non-participation are clear for them,” Simonyan said, adding that this doesn’t mean that relations with the organization are being frozen.

He said that Armenia has no decision to withdraw from CSTO.

“But I think that in the current situation my participation in the given event would be inappropriate. And the situation is such that the CSTO hasn’t been fulfilling its obligations,” the Speaker said.

Authorities open criminal case regarding YSU blast

Emil Karabekian

 13:52,

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 17, ARMENPRESS. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into the deadly explosion that occurred in the basement of the Chemistry Faculty of Yerevan State University on November 17.

In a statement, the law enforcement agency said the victim of the blast who died was 73 years old. It did not release the victims’ identities. His body was found in the basement where the fire and blast occurred.

Three others, including a responding police officer, were injured.

The police officer is hospitalized for smoke inhalation. The two other victims, who the YSU identified as their workers, 70 and 66 years old, are being treated for burns at a hospital.

The criminal investigation was opened under paragraph 2, article 355 of the Criminal Code (aggravated violation of safety requirements in construction or other works leading to death or serious injury), as well as paragraph 2, article 357 (aggravated violation of fire safety requirements leading to death or serious injury).

Investigators are working at the scene.

Armenia PM defends move to hike military budget

Emil Karabekian
Nigeria – Nov 16 2023
By AFP

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday defended Yerevan’s decision to increase military spending next year, saying he was still committed to normalisation talks with arch foe Azerbaijan.

Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku reclaimed in September in a lightning offensive.

Addressing lawmakers in Yerevan, Pashinyan said his government’s planned increase in defence spending by some seven percent next year “isn’t a preparation for war, but rather a preparation for peace.”

“I am confident, our neighbouring countries know it well that we are not going to attack anyone,” he said.

“Reforming armed forces is not only a right, but also an obligation of an independent country and that’s what we are doing.”

He also said that Yerevan’s “political will to sign, in the coming months, a peace agreement with Azerbaijan remains unwavering.”

Internationally mediated normalisation talks between the ex-Soviet republics have seen little progress but both Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev pledged to sign a comprehensive peace agreement by the end of the year.

The pair have held several rounds of talks under EU mediation.

But last month, Aliyev refused to attend a round of negotiations with Pashinyan in Spain, over what he said was the “biased position” of one of the participants, France.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join EU-chief Charles Michel as mediators at those talks.

So far, there has been no visible progress in EU efforts to organise a fresh round of negotiations.

Russia, the traditional power-broker in the region, has been bogged down in its war in Ukraine and Europe has taken a lead role in mediating the decades-long dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

https://guardian.ng/news/armenia-pm-defends-move-to-hike-military-budget/

Central Bank of Armenia: exchange rates and prices of precious metals – 08-11-23

Emil Karabekian

 17:09, 8 November 2023

YEREVAN, 8 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs “Armenpress” that today, 8 November, USD exchange rate down by 0.15 drams to 402.51 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.56 drams to 429.48 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.01 drams to 4.37 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 1.75 drams to 493.36 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 318.86 drams to 25373.41 drams. Silver price down by 8.84 drams to 291.63 drams.

The Haunting 100-year Parallel Between Greeks and Armenians

Emil Karabekian
Nov 7 2023
The destruction of Smyrna and the haunting parallels with the erasing of the entire 
120,000-plus Armenian community of Karabakh. Public Domain

2023 marks the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne, which efficiently ended the last traces of Greeks in Asia Minor and the Armenians in Artsakh.

By Julian McBride

2023 marks the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne, which efficiently ended the last traces of Greek civilization and Hellenism in Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor. This centennial has brought trauma for many descendants of the Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor Greek communities who suffered from a genocide overlooked by the entire world.

Today, another ancient civilization has ended as Azerbaijan completed its mission with the erasing of the entire 120,000-plus Armenian community of Karabakh along with the few handfuls of Greeks that lived there in Mehmana.

Much to the ire of the international community, Azerbaijan recently conducted a lightning campaign to finish off the remaining Armenian militias in the Karabakh region. The military campaign forced 120,000 plus Armenians to flee, fearing massacres such as sexual assaults and beheadings documented by global NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various media organizations.

The fall of Armenian civilization in the Nagorno-Karabakh region marks the end of 3,000 plus years of history in which Armenians endured various empires that often passed through the area from the Assyrians, Greek Macedonians, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, and Russians.

2023 brings scars to Armenians and Greeks, as the descendants of Hellenes from Eastern Thrace and Asia Minor commemorate a hundred years of forced population transfer under the Lausanne Treaty. In the aftermath of the disastrous Asia Minor campaign, the majority of Greeks in Asia Minor fled in lieu of massacres, which culminated in the Great Fire of Smyrna, known as the final act of the Greek genocide.

The remaining Greeks of Nicomedia, Cappadocia, Smyrna, Adrianople, Caesarea, and other places were transferred to the Hellenic Kingdom in return for the Turks of Crete. Only the Greeks of Constantinople were spared until the Istanbul pogrom of 1955.

Despite claiming to ‘keep the peace,’ the international community and great powers ultimately failed the Karabakh Armenians and Anatolian Greeks.

Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics and disassociating their obligations as ‘peacekeepers’ left the Armenians vulnerable to attack by Azerbaijan with no other true allies coming to aid. As British military support waned, Vladimir Lenin would fuel the Kemalists with Russian weaponry in the Greco-Turkish War.

Western nations have placated Azerbaijan’s genocidal ambitions with gas deals, with examples including the European Union. Likewise, great powers who won WWI, such as the UK, France, Italy, and the US, watched as hundreds of thousands of Greeks were slaughtered in

Smyrna and refused to intervene on their ships to save them because they saw Mustafa Kemal as a new partner in the Western fold.

The Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sevres, not only consolidated the Kemalist gains and formed the Turkish Republic, but Greeks were forced to leave regions that weren’t won in the war, such as Eastern Thrace and Northern Epirus.

The trilateral treaty between Armenia, Russia, and Azerbaijan also sealed the fate of Karabakh Armenians. Armenia was forced to cede districts in Karabakh that weren’t lost in 2020, such as Hadrut, and ultimately, the Artsakh Armenians were left at the mercy of a failing Russian peacekeeping mission and the brutal Azerbaijani state.

Smyrna’s destruction and tragedy represented the cataclysmic end of the Greco-Turkish War and the nail in the coffin of 3,000 years of Hellenism in Asia Minor. Smyrna was one of the starting points of Mycenean migration post Bronze Age Collapse, which started millennia of Greek heritage throughout Anatolia.

The ethnic cleansing of Artsakh also represents millennia of Armenian history in the region. Azerbaijan, internationally condemned for cultural genocide in Nakhichevan, will most likely replicate the despicable acts of heritage erasure in Karabakh.

Turkification and forcible assimilation have played a role in the region, and with Erdogan and Aliyev having a greater geopolitical agenda for pan-Turkism, Armenia is now the sole factor in their way of achieving the final goal.

Akin to the Greek Genocide and destruction of Hellenism in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, the world has also glossed over the plight of Armenians in Artsakh, who only wanted to live in self-determination away from a genocidal dictatorship akin to the Anatolian Greeks. Today, we say farewell to Anatolia and Artsakh—two ancient civilizations the world glossed over.

Armenpress: Armenian Church holds meeting of Supreme Spiritual Council

Emil Karabekian

 10:07, 1 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The meeting of the Supreme Spiritual Council of the Armenian Apostolic Church began on October 31 in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.

The assembly is chaired by Catholicos Karekin II and will be held for four days.

In a press release, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin said that issues pertaining to the post-war challenges facing Armenia and the issues of the forcibly displaced Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will be discussed during the assembly. The clergy will also discuss issues related to the preservation of the spiritual-cultural heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the spiritual, educational and social mission of the Church.

Asbarez: EU to Discuss Expanding Mission to Armenia

Emil Karabekian
by Asbarez Staff

 

 November 1, 2023

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories

Director of EU's mission in Armenia, Markus Ritter, speaks to reporters in Yeghegnadzor, Armenia on Nov. 1


The possible expansion of the European Union’s mission to Armenia will be discussed in Brussels by the end of the year, the head of the mission Markus Ritter told reporters on Wednesday after inaugurating a new headquarters in Yeghnadzor.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony, attended by the EU’s Delegation Head to Armenia Vassilis Maragos, Ritter spoke to reporters about the mission’s activities and its possible expansion, which were hinted by the EU leaders in recent weeks.

Ritter said the possibility on including representatives from all 27 EU countries was being explored, adding that there is a “lot of political attention” toward the EUMA, as the mission is known, given the recent developments in the region, Armenpress reported.

“The enlargement is something that also will be discussed in Brussels by the end of the year. We have to wait for the results. But, as it has been said before, at the moment because of the events here in autumn this mission has a lot of political attention,” Ritter said.

The EU Mission in Armenia inaugurated a new center in Yeghegnadzor, Armenia on Nov. 1

Last week, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly visited Armenia and announced that Canada will join EUMA, becoming the first non-EU country to do so.

Ritter said that if other non-EU countries also express desire to join EUMA, then the issue will be discussed in Brussels.

Building sustainable peace in the South Caucasus is one of the EU’s key objectives, Maragos, the EU Head of Delegation told reporters.

In his speech during the opening of the EUMA headquarters in Yeghegnadzor, Maragos recalled that, during the European Political Community summit in Granada, the EU reiterated its condemnation of Azerbaijan’s military operation against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and stressed the need for respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“We remain committed to these efforts,” Maragos said.

The humanitarian needs of more than 100,000 residents of Artsakh, who have found shelter in Armenia, are in the EU’s focus, he said.

Maragos added that Armenia and the EU are determined to strengthen their relations by working in the direction of fully utilizing the potential of the comprehensive agreements between the EU and Armenia, as well as the EU Economic and Investments Plan.

“Building sustainable peace in South Caucasus is one of the EU’s key objectives,” Ambassador Maragos said.