Author: Garik Boshkezenian

                                        Friday, 


Kocharian’s Bloc Plans Anti-Government Rally

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia - Thousands of opposition supporters led by former President Robert 
Kocharian (center) and senior members of his Hayastan alliance march to the 
Yerablur Militarty Pantheon in Yerevan, September 26, 2021.


The main opposition Hayastan alliance said on Friday that it will rally 
supporters in Yerevan soon in an effort to thwart what it described as more 
Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan planned by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Senior representatives of the bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian 
claimed that Pashinian is ready to cede more territory to Baku, including by 
agreeing to a land corridor between the Nakhichevan exclave and western 
Azerbaijan passing through Armenia’s Syunik province.

“We believe that what is happening will lead to a new capitulation agreement,” 
said Ishkhan Saghatelian, a deputy parliament speaker. “Armenia will be making 
new concessions. In order to prevent that, pan-Armenian forces must form a 
national resistance front to show the entire world, including this government of 
evil, that our people disagree with this course and are fighting against it.”

“We need to explain all this to people because [Pashinian] is continuing to fool 
people [with talk of peace.] After sending people to their death [in 
Nagorno-Karabakh last fall] he is now intimidating them with [warnings about] 
another war,” he told reporters.


Armenia - Opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelian attends a session of the 
National Assembly after being elected one of its three deputy speakers, Yerevan, 
August 6, 2021.

Saghatelian said that Hayastan is now holding consultations with other 
opposition groups and will announce the date of its rally next week. He would 
not say whether it will be a one-off protest or the first in a series of 
anti-government rallies.

Pashinian visited the Armenian parliament on Thursday to meet with deputies 
representing his Civil Contract party. According to one of those lawmakers, 
Gagik Melkonian, Pashinian assured them that he is not planning any territorial 
concessions to Baku.

Melkonian shrugged off the opposition allegations about such concessions, saying 
that Kocharian’s bloc simply wants to seize power. He said the authorities are 
not worried about Hayastan protests.

“Their place is the street,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Let them fight 
on the street. Nobody will be standing by their side.”


Armenia - Supporters of former President Robert Kocharian and his opposition 
alliance attend an election campaign rally in Yerevan's Nor Nork district, June 
9, 2021.

Saghatelian confirmed that Pashinian’s removal from power remains on Hayastan’s 
agenda.

Kocharian, who had ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, likewise said on October 4 that 
regime change remains his and his political allies’ key goal. But he cautioned 
that they must “generate” greater popular anger at the government before trying 
to topple it with street protests.

“The biggest problem is that a considerable part of our people has come to terms 
with this situation and voted for these ones,” Kocharian said, referring to the 
ruling political team. He insisted at the same time that a politically active 
minority of citizens can also pose a serious threat to Pashinian’s hold on power.

Pashinian’s Civil Contract party won Armenia’s June 20 parliamentary elections 
with almost 54 percent of the vote, according to their official results. 
Hayastan came in a distant second with 21 percent. Its final election campaign 
rally in Yerevan drew a massive crowd.



Armenian Watchdog Alarmed By ‘Curbs On Press Freedom’

        • Robert Zargarian

Armenia - Ashot Melikian, chairman of the Committee to Protect Freedom of 
Speech, at a news conference in Yerevan, .


An Armenian press freedom group on Friday expressed serious concern over what it 
called new restrictions on news reporting imposed by the authorities in recent 
months.

“These restrictions have taken the form of legislative initiatives, rules and 
regulations, and practical actions restricting journalistic activity,” said 
Ashot Melikian of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Speech.

Presenting a quarterly report released by his organization, Melikian singled out 
serious curbs on journalists’ freedom of movements inside the Armenian 
parliament building which were imposed days after the current National Assembly 
held its inaugural session on August 2.

Under the new rules introduced by parliament speaker Alen Simonian, reporters 
accredited to the parliament can no longer interview deputies coming out of the 
chamber or enter a section of the building housing their offices. Simonian, who 
is a senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, cited security concerns 
and the need for greater media respect for parliamentarians.

Opposition lawmakers, human rights ombudsman Arman Tatoyan and Armenia’s leading 
media associations rejected that explanation.

Those groups expressed outrage at Simonian’s attempts to block press coverage of 
an August 11 parliament session that descended into chaos amid bitter insults 
traded by pro-government and opposition deputies. Security officers entered the 
press gallery overlooking the chamber and ordered journalists present there to 
stop filming or photographing the ugly scenes.


Armenia - Parliament speaker Alen Simonian talks to journalists, August 25, 2021.

“It was an unprecedented and condemnable action,” Melikian told a news 
conference. “Journalists must be able to show the public what kind of a National 
Assembly was elected and how each deputy behaves.”

Melikian also condemned recent government-backed bills that tripled maximum 
legal fines for “slander” and made it a crime to gravely insult state officials 
and public figures.

“Nobody is going to defend slanderers or slander in general,” he said. “What we 
emphasize is that very often strong criticism is interpreted as a grave insult. 
We all know that officials and politicians regard such criticism as an insult.”

The bill on heavier defamation fines was authored by speaker Simonian. President 
Armen Sarkissian refused to sign it into law in April, asking the Constitutional 
Court to assess its constitutionality. The court ruled earlier this month that 
the bill does not run counter to the Armenian constitution.

The Armenian authorities’ decision to criminalize slander and defamation was 
strongly criticized by Freedom House late last month. The Washington-based 
democracy group said it testifies to a “clear degradation of democratic norms in 
Armenia, including freedom of expression.” Pro-government lawmakers rejected the 
criticism.



Norway, Moderna Pledge Biggest Vaccine Donation To Armenia


Vials with a sticker reading, "COVID-19 / Coronavirus vaccine / Injection only" 
and a medical syringe are seen in front of a displayed Moderna, October 31, 2020.


The Norwegian government and Moderna have pledged to give Armenia more than 
620,000 doses of a coronavirus vaccine manufactured by the U.S. biotech company, 
Health Minister Anahit Avanesian announced on Friday.

Avanesian said the Armenian Ministry of Health signed a “trilateral agreement” 
to that effect with them on Thursday.

“Thank you the Kingdom of Norway and the Moderna company for your efforts to 
overcome the pandemic,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Avanesian said that the European Union will assist in the upcoming shipments of 
Moderna’s Spikevax vaccine to Armenia. She gave no dates for their delivery.

Moderna’s co-founder and chairman, Noubar Afeyan, is an Armenian-American 
billionaire businessman. Afeyan has financed various charity projects in Armenia.


Armenia -- Armenian-American businessman Noubar Afeyan speaks in Yerevan, April 
24, 2019

Armenia has already received smaller quantities of vaccines donated by the 
governments of France, Belgium, Lithuania, China and Russia.

Health authorities in the South Caucasus state began using earlier this month 
50,000 doses of Spikevax provided by the Lithuanian government. Armenians were 
previously inoculated only with Chinese and Russian vaccines as well as the 
Astra Zeneca jab developed by Oxford University.

Avanesian said in July that Armenia will buy this fall 50,000 doses of Johnson & 
Johnson’s single-dose vaccine and 300,000 doses of the Novavax jab. Shortly 
afterwards the Armenian government allocated funds for the purchase of 300,000 
doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. None of those vaccines have been imported 
yet.


Armenia - Health Minister Anahit Avanesian is vaccinated against COVID-19, April 
28, 2021.

The latest donation pledge comes as the authorities in Yerevan are trying to 
speed up the slow pace of vaccinations in the country of about 3 million amid 
rising coronavirus cases and hospitalizations that have overwhelmed the Armenian 
healthcare system.

As of October 17, just over 403,000 people there received at least one dose of a 
coronavirus vaccine and only about 185,000 of them were fully vaccinated.

Starting from October 1, all Armenian workers are required to get inoculated or 
take coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense. Avanesian said last 
week that the authorities could also introduce a mandatory coronavirus health 
pass for entry to cultural and leisure venues.

The Ministry of Health said on Friday that 42 more Armenians have died from 
COVID-19 in the past day. The ministry also reported five other deaths 
indirectly caused by the disease.



Russia Indispensable For Ending Armenian-Azeri Border Dispute, Says Putin

        • Nane Sahakian

Russia - President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the annual Valdai 
Discussion Club in Sochi, .


Armenia and Azerbaijan cannot end their simmering border disputes without 
Russian mediation and mutual concessions, according to Russia’s President 
Vladimir Putin.

Putin commented on the aftermath of last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh and 
Russian efforts to bolster a shaky peace in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict 
zone during an annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club on Thursday.

“The main thing now is to finally resolve the situation on the 
[Armenian-Azerbaijani] border, and it’s impossible to do anything here without 
Russia’s participation,” he said. “We probably don’t need anyone except Russia 
and the two sides. Why? … Because the Russian army’s General Staff has maps 
showing the borders that existed between Soviet republics in Soviet times.”

Tensions have run high in recent months at several sections of the long border 
where Azerbaijani forces reportedly advanced a few kilometers into Armenian 
territory in mid-May. Armenia has repeatedly demanded their unconditional 
withdrawal. Azerbaijan maintains that its troops took up new positions on the 
Azerbaijani side of the frontier.


Amenia - An Armenian soldier at a border post in Gegharkunik province, July 5, 
2021.

Moscow proposed later in May that Yerevan and Baku set up a commission on border 
delimitation and demarcation. It offered to act as a mediator in such talks.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated at the time that the talks are conditional 
on an Azerbaijani withdrawal from Armenia’s “sovereign territory.” But he 
indicated in August that his government is ready to negotiate without any 
preconditions.

Baku has also expressed readiness for such negotiations. They have still not 
begun, however.

Putin, who brokered a ceasefire that stopped the Karabakh war last November, 
said that while Soviet military maps must serve as a basis of the talks the two 
conflicting sides should be ready for minor territorial swaps and other mutual 
concessions.

“There are things there that also require mutual compromises,” he said. 
“Something could be straightened [on the map] in some places and swapped in 
others.”


Armenia - A view of an area in Armenia's Syunik province where Armenian and 
Azerbaijani troops are locked in a border standoff, May 14, 2021. (Photo by the 
Armenian Human Rights Defender's Office)

Pashinian has for months been facing Armenian opposition allegations that he has 
secretly agreed to cede major chunks of Armenian territory to Azerbaijan. The 
prime minister has categorically denied that.

Russia is already the sole international facilitator of ongoing 
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on opening transport links between the two 
South Caucasus foes. A Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force set up in January 
for that purpose held a fresh meeting in Moscow earlier this week.

Putin stressed on Thursday that Moscow remains committed to a “multilateral 
format” of achieving a broader normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations 
and a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. He said it is now trying to step up the 
mediating activities of the OSCE Minsk Group co-headed by Russia, France and the 
United States.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

 

Asia Times


By MK Bhadrakumar 

[US suggests new expanded arc of containment against Russian
'aggression' amid hints of another Biden-Putin meeting before year
end]

Moscow butted the grand old trans-Atlantic alliance in the chest on
Monday with the Foreign Ministry announcing that it will suspend the
NATO military liaison mission with effect from November 1 and recall
the accreditation of its staff in response to the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization’s decision to withdraw the accreditation of eight
Russian diplomats.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov curtly added, “If NATO has some urgent
matters, it may contact our ambassador in Belgium.” Sparring has begun
for the next NATO summit in Madrid on June 29-30, 2022.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a recent visit to
Madrid that the summit will adopt NATO’s next strategic concept,
“which will reflect the new security environment” and the
trans-Atlantic alliance’s 2030 agenda that aims to deal with a “more
unpredictable and dangerous world” of “increasingly aggressive”
Russian behavior, China “flexing its economic might to intimidate
others,” and instability in the Middle East, North Africa, and the
Sahel.

NATO plans to shake off the gloom over the defeat in Afghanistan by
marching on. NATO-Russia conversations had dried up already much
before that sobering moment. The 1977 NATO-Russia Founding Act has
been moribund since 2014, when relations between Moscow and the West
landed in a deep freeze.

But in such situations, there is always a tipping point. Most
certainly, the regional tour by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to
Georgia, Ukraine and Romania en route to the NATO ministerial meeting
in Brussels (October 21-22) came to be that.

Austin’s remarks suggested that an encirclement of Russia in a new arc
that includes Transcaucasia is in the cards. “Russian aggression” was
his constant refrain.

On the last leg of his tour in Romania, Austin claimed, “The security
and stability of the Black Sea are in the US’s national interest and
critical for the security of NATO’s eastern flank.”

The Pentagon said Austin’s tour is a way to “reassure allies and
partners of America’s commitment to their sovereignty in the face of
Russian aggression.”

The power dynamic is shifting.

On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged that the
US military “has stepped up work with the full support of its NATO
allies to modernize tactical nuclear weapons and their storage sites
in Europe.”

He noted that “a cause for special concern is the engagement of pilots
from the bloc’s non-nuclear member states in the drills to practice
employing tactical nuclear weapons. We regard this as a direct
violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”

To be sure, Russia will make countermoves. Shoigu made the above
remarks while the chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed
Forces, General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, was on a high-profile
four-day visit to Russia.

Shoigu told Bagheri that Russia is ready to maintain “dynamic and
versatile” military cooperation with Iran, and proposed Syria-style
cooperation in Afghanistan and “on the territory of neighboring
states.”

After a tour of the Russian Navy’s headquarters in St Petersburg and
military facilities in Kronshtadt after talks with Shoigu and with the
chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, Bagheri voiced
satisfaction that “the conclusion of arms agreements and their
implementation in the near future will considerably deepen our
relationships.”

The US strategy of encircling Russia has been very consistent since
the Bill Clinton presidency when NATO expansion began. Recently
declassified Western archival materials confirm Moscow’s claim that
then-US secretary of state James Baker and German chancellor Helmut
Kohl had assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev verbally that NATO
would not expand “one inch” to the east in a post-Cold War setting.

By 2003, president George W Bush unilaterally withdrew the US from the
ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, which was a cornerstone of global
security, anchored on the complex security matrix of gaining strategic
advantage by de-energizing the nuclear potential of a probable
opponent.

President Barack Obama followed up with planning missile-shield
deployments in Romania and Poland, just outside Russia’s Western
Military District. Obama resigned from his promise in 2012 to
then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that after winning a second
term, he would reach a consensus with Moscow on missile defense
deployment.

Obama’s successor Donald Trump thereafter withdrew the US from the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banning
intermediate-range missiles.

Surveying this debris of broken promises, the paradox of the US-Russia
relationship is that while President Joe Biden is content with
selective engagement of Russia and is in search of “predictability,”
President Vladimir Putin regards the US policy as highly predictable
in its potential toxicity but is pleased nonetheless that the
engagement is constructive enough.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are probably on the same page
here. Interestingly, Putin spoke at some length recently on China. At
the Russian Energy Week International Forum last week, Putin said, “As
far as I understand the Chinese philosophy, including state-building
and governance, it does not include the use of force.

“I believe China does not need to use force. China is an enormous and
powerful economy. It has become the world’s No 1 economy in terms of
purchasing power parity, leaving the United States behind. China is
capable of achieving its national goals by building up this capacity,
and I see no threats here.” Putin was referring to Taiwan.

As for South China Sea, Putin said wherever “mixed interests are at
play … every country in that region should be given a chance to
resolve all arising controversial issues without the intervention of
non-regional powers in a calm manner relying on the fundamental norms
of international law and by way of negotiations. I believe the
potential is there, and it is far from being fully tapped.”

There are similarities in the Russian and Chinese strategies – and,
possibly, coordination too. Thus the new mantra in the White House is
“responsible competition.” Biden needs to focus on his domestic
agenda, which is decisive in clinching a second term for his
presidency in 2024.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disclosed on Wednesday that US Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who visited
Moscow recently, discussed “various options and certain understandings
were reached” on another Putin-Biden meeting.

Asked whether another Putin-Biden meeting was possible this year,
Peskov noted that “it is realistic in one format or another,” and
added that Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov and Nuland reached some
understanding “in terms of the prospects for further dialogue at the
highest level in the near future.”

*
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.