Nikol Pashinyan holds farewell meeting with Japanese Ambassador to Armenia Fukushima Masanori ARMENPRESS
Day: November 22, 2023
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that the West’s continued interference in the South Caucasus region may risks the recurrence of military actions there and defended Baku’s accusation that France is preparing the ground for a new war in the region.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan contended that France was sowing the seeds of war in the Caucasus through its recent delivery of military equipment to Armenia. Official Baku has also condemned Paris and Washington for its “pro-Armenia” bias.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Wednesday blamed Yerevan for what she called a “radical shift” in Armenia’s foreign policy “orientation.”
“Western mediators, including France, have completely different goals. They seek to turn the South Caucasus into another arena of geopolitical confrontation, ignore the fundamental interests of the countries of the region, and do nothing to ensure the security, stability, and prosperity of this region,” Zakharova said.
“I believe that in Baku or in a number of other places, they are quite tired of intervention from Paris, which is unsuccessfully trying to restore its geopolitical prestige in the South Caucasus, which it has lost in other parts of the world and on other continents,” asserted Zakharova.
“Sadly, the risks of relapse remain in the South Caucasus. In this regard, Russia is consistently working to transform the region into a zone of stability and prosperity, based on the balance of interests of all regions and their neighbors,” explained the spokesperson.
She said neither the U.S. nor that EU can be considered bona fide mediators, because their underlying aim is to “remove Russian from the South Caucasus.”
“At the same time, Yerevan wants to negotiate in Washington and Brussels, although neither the US nor the EU can be considered bona fide mediators for a number of reasons. Their actions are “They want to destroy the existing security mechanisms in the region and at the same time to shamelessly steal and modify—in accordance with opportunistic considerations—the tripartite agreements reached with the participation of Moscow,” said Zakharova. “Therefore, there is no real benefit from their mediation, nor can it be, as the charge is different, the objective is different.”
“Yerevan’s reckless bet that the West will help them has been a fiasco. This is also obvious. It is impossible not to see this. Despite the existing proposals and invitations, the negotiations on the peace treaty are still frozen,” the Russian official lashed out.
Zakharova also discussed Yerevan’s decision to not participate in the upcoming summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization set to begin Thursday in Minsk. She accused Armenia of trying to conceal its intentions by playing both sides, referencing comments by Armenian government officials about the need to diversify their interests.
She said Armenia’s reasoning for distancing itself from the CSTO is a “miscalculation,” and said Yerevan’s refusal to participate in the summit is “regrettable.”
“We do not believe that this decision corresponds to the interests of the Armenian people and will contribute to the security and stability of our friendly country. Our Armenian colleagues do not intend to impeded the activities of the [CSTO] bodies or to prevent the implementation of the already agreed documents. Basically, it leaves the door open for Yerevan and enables [it] to join the efforts later. We hope that the Armenian allies will take advantage of this opportunity already in the not-distant future,” Zakharova said.
She emphasized that Russia is convinced that the CSTO will play an important role in regional stability in the current conditions.
“A CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision about which is ‘on the table’ as before, would be quite a significant factor in ensuring Armenia’s security, unlike the [current] EU [monitoring] mission [in Armenia], which continues to demonstrate its ineffectiveness,” Zakharova added.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it was ready to “re-engage” in talks with Azerbaijan, a day after Baku called for direct — one-on-one —peace negotiations with Yerevan. At the same time, a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party said that Yerevan is inclined to continue talks with Baku through European Union’s mediation efforts.
In calling for direct talks with Armenia, Baku also said the meetings can be held on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
In its statement on Wednesday, Armenia’s foreign ministry stressed that official Yerevan is ready to re-engage in negotiations, having as a basis “mutual recognition and respect for each other’s territorial integrity without ambiguities, implementation of the further border delimitation based on the [1991] Alma-Ata Declaration and the latest legitimate Soviet maps, the unblocking of the region’s infrastructures based on the principles of full respect for the sovereignty, jurisdiction, reciprocity and equality of the states.”
It said that “despite all the complications and challenges” official Yerevan sees “a real possibility of establishing peace between the two countries, which can be realized if there is political will on both sides, and the Armenian side has that will.”
Armenia’s foreign ministry challenged Baku saying “one of the expressions of this will is also the fact that Armenia proposed to Azerbaijan to hold a meeting of border delimitation commissions on the state frontier between the two countries.”
Azerbaijan has been avoiding Western-mediated talks and backed out of two scheduled meetings, one in Washington this week and another in Granada, Spain last month.
“Those five-way [Granada] and three-way [Washington] meetings had previously been agreed upon, and Yerevan considered it to be more efficient to present [its latest proposals] to Azerbaijan during those meetings,” Armenia’s foreign ministry said.
“Nevertheless, in order to prevent attempts to deadlock the negotiation process and achieve lasting peace in our region, the Republic of Armenia constructively conveyed its observations on the [draft] agreement,” the statement said.
The foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that it had submitted it sixth draft of proposals on a peace deal to Baku.
Sargis Khandanyan, who represents Pashinyan’s Civil Contract faction and heads the parliament’s Foreign Relations Commission, told Azatutyun.am’s Armenian Service Wednesday that the main principles for Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization were agreed upon by the parties in July when the latest round of EU-mediated talks was held between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“Based on this logic, it is necessary to ensure the continuity of those negotiations and continue meetings at the level of the countries’ leaders through the mediation of the European Union, in particular, European Council President Charles Michel,” Khandanyan said.
“But we saw that Azerbaijan rejected both meetings that were scheduled in Granada and Brussels. Nevertheless, Armenia continues to adhere to this logic and wants to achieve settlement within this framework,” Khandanyan added.
U.S., EU Reported To Have Discussed With Ukraine Possible Peace Talks With Russia Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Categories