Day: February 15, 2024

Artsakh Rights Defender Is Not Convinced By Russia’s Calls For Return of Forcibly Displaced Citizens – Asbarez.com  Asbarez Armenian News

Armenian Speaker’s Sister-In-Law Set Free  The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday warned that Azerbaijan might be planning a “large scale attack” on Armenia and rejected Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s continued demand for changes in Armenia’s laws.

Pashinyan said that a series of statements from Baku in recent days about the legislative framework of Armenia are a violation of Armenia’s sovereignty and can been seen as “interference in our country’s internal affairs.”

“Attempts to interpret whether there is any provision in Armenia’s legislation preventing the signing of the peace treaty [with Azerbaijan] have nothing to do with reality,” Pashinyan said, after Aliyev, a day earlier, again called for changes to Armenia’s laws.

“Armenia and Azerbaijan have succeeded in reaching an agreement on a number of articles; and one of them is that the parties cannot refer to their legislation in order to refuse to fulfill any provision of the peace treaty. Therefore, there is no provision in the legislation of Armenia preventing the implementation of the peace treaty. This is not only a political, but also an expert assessment,” Pashinyan explained.

He also accused Baku of deliberately dragging out the delimitation and demarcation of the border process, saying that Baku was undermining this process in order to launch a military attack “in some parts of the border” with the aim of instigating an all-out war with Armenia.

Aliyev’s latest threats were made a day after Azerbaijani forces attacked Armenian position in Syunik, killing four soldiers and injuring another.

Pashinyan detailed the steps taken by Yerevan to advance the border delimitation process, all based on agreements reached by the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Yet he accused Baku of undermining the process.

“Our analysis shows that there can only be one reason for this, and the reasons could be their [intentions] to launch military actions in some parts of the border with the prospect of turning the military escalation into a large-scale war against the Republic of Armenia. This intention is read in all statements and actions made by Baku,” Pashinyan said.

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman dismissed on Thursday Russia’s offers to help Karabakh Armenians displaced by last September’s Azerbaijani military offensive return to their homeland.

Gegham Stepanyan insisted that they will not go back even if Moscow offers them additional security guarantees.

“I believe that international guarantees are needed instead,” he told a news conference in Yerevan. “The track record of the Russian peacekeeping contingent deployed to Artsakh after 2020 shows that that guarantee is not enough to ensure security in Artsakh.”

Armenia has denounced the Russian peacekeepers for their failure to prevent or stop the September 19-20 assault that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s practically entire population to flee to Armenia. President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have rejected the criticism.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Wednesday that Moscow is now discussing with Baku the possibility of the safe return of the more than 100,000 Karabakh refugees. Earlier this week, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin similarly called for “creating conditions” for their repatriation.

Galuzin also claimed that the Karabakh Armenians left their homeland willingly. Stepanyan condemned the claim.

“The Russian peacekeeping contingent should have been the first to certify that people left under real threat of physical annihilation,” said the ombudsman exiled in Armenia along with other Karabakh leaders.

Moscow is not known to have contacted any of those leaders so far to discuss the repatriation issue. It did not prevent Azerbaijani security services from arresting eight former political and military leaders of Karabakh during the mass exodus.

The 2,000 or so Russian peacekeepers remain stationed in Karabakh despite the fact that only a few dozen ethnic Armenians are reportedly left there. A senior Russian diplomat said in October that their mission “will also be necessary in the future.”