15:41, 24 December, 2020
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Ombudsman of Armenia Arman Tatoyan is in Moscow, Russia, on a working visit, his Office told Armenpress.
“The main purpose of the visit is to contribute to the return of Armenian captives from Azerbaijan.
Taking into account the specifics of the topic, details on the visit and the meetings will not be published”, the Office said in a statement.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
16:16, 24 December, 2020
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Chairwoman of the Russian Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko says the issue of the status of Nagorno Karabakh requires additional negotiations, reports TASS.
“Russia expects the French and US Presidents to make efforts on this matter. The status of Nagorno Karabakh is in brackets, it requires additional negotiations. Of course, we expect that the OSCE, the French President, the US and other states, which are involved in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement process, will make efforts. Quite a difficult work is ahead”, she said.
According to her, today the Russian peacekeepers are perceived by both sides, by the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples as an effort of a brotherly people aimed at assisting the lasting settlement of the NK conflict.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
AL-Monitor [Ankara appears to be mulling a US-friendly foreign policy revision to counter Iran and Russia in the Caucasus and Black Sea regions, but such a shift will not be without geopolitical risks elsewhere.] By Metin Gurcan Dec. 24, 2020 In a rather unusual post on its website last week, Turkey’s Defense Ministry published footage and pictures from a meeting the country’s defense and foreign ministers had with representatives of two Turkic minorities — the Ahiska Turks and the Gagauzes — during their visit to Ukraine. Holding meetings with Turkic minorities abroad and publicizing them is hardly commonplace for Turkish defense ministers, as long-time Ankara watchers would know. Such contacts have been the duty primarily of the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities, a branch of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, within the scope of soft power projection rather than defense and security. Ankara’s interest in its ethnic kin abroad has markedly perked since the flare-up of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in late September. Turkey’s military assistance to Azerbaijan, with which it has close political and ethnic bonds, helped the Azeri army reclaim some of the territories that Armenian forces had occupied since the early 1990s. In Turkey, the six-week war shifted public attention to the South Caucasus from the Middle East, where Turkish military operations in Syria and Libya had dominated the country’s foreign agenda in the past several years. The state-owned and pro-government media, in particular, have hailed the Russian-brokered cease-fire deal as a victory for both Azerbaijan and Turkey. A joint Turkish-Russian center to monitor the truce has been portrayed as “the return of Turkish soldiers to Azerbaijan after 102 years” and the planned reopening of transport routes in the region as Turkey’s gain of a strategic gateway to the Turkic republics of Central Asia. On Dec. 10, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended a celebratory military parade in Baku, where his speech included verses by a nationalist Azeri poet that sparked a diplomatic row with Iran. For some Turkish observers, Erdogan’s speech resonated as the signal of a shift in Ankara’s foreign policy. Though the controversial verses belonged to anonymous folklore, they had inspired a 1960 poem lamenting Azerbaijan’s 19th-century partition between Iran and Russia by Azeri poet Bahtiyar Vahapzade, an ardent supporter of the pan-Turkism movement, which advocates the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples in the world. Vahapzade was stigmatized as a “nationalist” over the poem and expelled from his post as a university professor in what was then the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The row with Tehran abated, as Ankara seemed to have misunderstood the poem as a reference to the Armenian occupation of Azeri lands. Still, Erdogan’s emphasis on stronger bonds with Azerbaijan reinforced anticipation that the focus of his foreign policy will increasingly shift from the Arab world to the Caucasus, the Black Sea and Caspian basins, and Central Asia. Efforts to invigorate ties including military and security cooperation with the Central Asian Turkic republics — which Ankara has neglected for some time — should not come as a surprise. Dictating the shift is the realpolitik of both foreign and domestic politics. In the regional context, Erdogan’s government has ended up with no real allies in the Middle East and North Africa except Qatar, despite its claim at leadership in the Muslim world. At home, the declining political fortunes of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) have made it a hostage of its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which promotes Turkish nationalism and stronger ties with Azerbaijan and the rest of the Turkic world. To preserve his strong grip on power, Erdogan needs to sustain the alliance, so he is unlikely to object to his voter base becoming more nationalist amid a pan-Turkist orientation in foreign policy and growing populist, far-right and nationalist sentiments in domestic politics. The AKP and the MHP have sought to woo the Good Party, another nationalist outfit, to their alliance, which is another dynamic nourishing the pan-Turkist twist in foreign policy. Whether this new inclination is a transient or lasting one is hard to gauge, given the fast U-turns in Erdogan’s foreign policy record. Still, judging by the writings of scholars close to the government, Ankara appears on course to enter the new year with a pan-Turkist perspective at the expense of angering Moscow and Tehran. According to Burhanettin Duran, the head of a pro-government think tank, Tehran is “deeply unhappy” with Ankara’s growing regional influence and worried about the prospect of shifting allegiances in the region after the change of guard in Washington. “In this new chapter, the great game between regional powers will involve Turkey, Iran and Israel — with the former having the upper hand. The Iranian elite must now put aside their nationalistic pride and exaggerated hopes, and focus on the region's new geopolitics,” Duran wrote in a Dec. 17 article in the Daily Sabah. Seemingly, Ankara’s preparations for a Joe Biden White House involve plans for a foreign policy readjustment with a pan-Turkist flavor that would aim to isolate Iran and contain Russia in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions with Israel’s support. Such objectives, Ankara seems to believe, will strike a chord with the Biden administration, which assumes office Jan. 20. Yet such a shift would come with the increased risk of a geopolitical disconnect between Turkey’s postures to the north and the south. To counterbalance Russia and isolate Iran to the north, that is the Black Sea and the Caucasus, Turkey would need to lean on the Western security bloc, get NATO involved, improve ties with Ukraine and Israel and, most importantly, reset ties with Washington under the Biden administration. To the south, however, Turkey needs continued Russian and Iranian cooperation to counterbalance the United States and Europe in the Syrian conflict and the energy rivalry in the Eastern Mediterranean. Such a geopolitical disconnect poses a tough dilemma that will inevitably strain and test Ankara’s capabilities next year.
The opposition is calling for PM Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over his handling of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has backed the prospect of early parliamentary elections next year, after huge protests over his handling of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on Friday that he was inviting parliamentary and interested, non-parliamentary powers to talks on the subject, though he did not name an exact date for them.
Pashinyan has been under heavy pressure since the end of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The opposition is calling for his resignation, holding him responsible for the defeat against Azerbaijan.
Since the peace deal between the two neighbours was signed on November 10, Armenia’s opposition politicians and their supporters have been demanding that Pashinyan step down.
The accord saw Azerbaijan reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas that it had lost in the early 1990s.
The Russia-brokered agreement ended 44 days of fierce fighting in which the Azerbaijani army routed Armenian forces.
Pashinyan has defended the peace deal as a painful but necessary move to prevent Azerbaijan from overrunning the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region.
He argued on Friday that his critics lack broad public support for their demand.
“There is only one way to get answers to these questions: by holding early parliamentary elections,” Pashinyan wrote on Facebook.
Police on Thursday arrested at least 77 people following clashes when thousands of protesters converged in capital Yerevan and surrounded the heavily guarded government building.
Opposition supporters on Friday continued blocking streets in the Armenian capital and engaged in occasional scuffles with police.
Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994.
Fighting broke out in the region on September 27 this year and lasted until November 9. In total, more than 4,600 people died on both sides – most of them soldiers. On the Armenian side alone, 60 civilians were killed.
A cargo plane from China will transport four large oxygen production stations for medical centers, 94 individual oxygen concentrators, 100,000 Covid-19 diagnostic test, 200,000 sampling sticks, as well as masks and clothes., Minister of Health Arsen Torosyan informs.
According to him, the plane will land in Yerevan tomorrow.
Twelve oxygen production stations have already been installed in the country’s medical centers this year, four of which were transported to Armenia by cargo plane a week ago.
TEHRAN- During a meeting between an Iranian delegation headed by Amir-Hossein Zamaninia, Iran’s deputy oil minister and an Armenian delegation led by Hakob Vartanian, Armenia’s deputy minister for local government and infrastructures, the two sides made an agreement on the expansion of long-term energy cooperation.
After the meeting, Zamaninia, who is Iran’s deputy oil minister for the international affairs, said the talks about some technical issues of gas export and gas-for-electricity barter were postponed to the near future, after which a long-term contract will be signed.
Vartanian, for his part, said, “We have been negotiating with Iran for a year and a half about gas export and the extension of the gas-for-electricity deal; today’s meeting was one of the most constructive negotiations in this regard.”
Emphasizing that in the meeting the basic points were agreed, and the solution of some small and technical points were postponed to the near future, he said: "The two delegations in this meeting tried to take into account the mutual interests of the two countries."
Iran and Armenia signed a gas-for-electricity barter deal in 2004, based on which, for a 20-year period, Iran would export gas to Armenia to be consumed by the country’s power plants, and in return, Iran imports electricity from Armenia.
Armenia started importing gas from Iran since mid-2009.
Iran and Armenia have been cooperating for years in gas and electricity swap, and two-way economic and political ties have grown in tandem with an increase in trade.
MA/MA
Over 500 refugees, on December 25, returned to breakaway Republic of Nagorno Karabakh with assistance from Russian peacekeepers, the Russian Defense Minister said on December 25. It added that the refugees arrived in buses which were safeguarded by the Russian army and military police. The residents of the Caucasian region were displaced after a battle for control ensued between Armenia and Azerbaijan but have started to return following a ceasefire between the two. Since, Russia brokered the pact, over 37,000 locals have returned.
“Today, 540 people were delivered by buses from Yerevan to Stepanakert. The buses were accompanied by patrols from the Russian peacekeeping contingent and military police,” the Russian ministry was quoted as saying by ANI.
Read: Over 1,000 Refugees Return To Nagorno-Karabakh Following Armenia-Azerbaijan Ceasefire
Read: Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Shows Chinese Military Needs Better Counter-strategy: Report
In another official statement, the Russian Defense Ministry informed that the Russian peacekeepers have been providing security to the refugees returning to their residence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region along with humanitarian aid. The Russian force is also aiding in the restoration of the infrastructure facilities in the area and conducting 'round-the-clock monitoring' of the situation in the region from '23 observation posts'. Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to exchange the prisoners of war captured by Armenia’s army along with the mortal remains of soldiers and victims killed during the military confrontation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
This move comes after Russia brokered a peace agreement and urged the warring sides Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately restore the economic and transport ties in the Nagorno-Karabak region, and felicitate the return of the refugees. In accordance with the agreement, Armenia and Azerbaijan declared a complete ceasefire and halted all military operations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in November 2020. Following this move, the Russian Federation deployed Russian peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire and military operations in the area.
Read: Armenia Honors Nagorno-Karabakh Dead, Anti-PM Demo
Read: Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Shows Chinese Military Needs Better Counter-strategy: Report
MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/. All humanitarian cargo, delivered from Russia to Nagorno-Karabakh, has been taken to distribution centers in the unrecognized republic, the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s press service told TASS on Saturday.
"The humanitarian aid that had arrived by rail has been completely allocated among regions of Nagorno-Karabakh. The cargo was delivered <…> to distribution points and is already being actively used for restoring houses and social facilities," the press service said.
The last batch of the humanitarian delivery, taken to the Martuni and Martakert districts, comprises about 5,000 square meters of glass and almost 70 tons of corrugated sheet metal for reconstruction works.
Overall, the humanitarian delivery to Nagorno-Karabakh included 20 mobile diesel generators, six UAZ vehicles, eight fire tankers and one truck-mounted crane. Construction materials were also sent to the conflict-hit region, such as over 22,000 square meters of glass, about 1,000 cubic meters of wood, chipboard and plywood, as well as 13,000 square meters of corrugated sheet metal.
Besides, the humanitarian cargo sent to Nagorno-Karabakh also includes over 34,600 blankets, 1,800 mattresses, 1,900 pillows, 3,200 bedding sets, 940 sets of furniture, 4,000 beds and 500 stoves.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku and Yerevan have disputed sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh since February 1988, when the region announced its secession from the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. In the armed conflict of 1992-1994, Azerbaijan lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjoining districts.
On November 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting from November 10. Under the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the positions that they had held, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region.
Only one ceasefire violation has been recorded since then. Thousands of refugees, who had to flee amid intense fighting, already returned to their homes with the help of peacekeepers.