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Day: May 10, 2024
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, on Friday kicked off two days of talks in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, on a peace deal between the two countries.
Prior to the talks the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held separate meetings with their Kazakh counterpart, Murat Nurtleu, who is hosting the talks and later joined the two top diplomats in their meeting.
Ahead of the closed-door talks, Mirzoyan emphasized Armenia’s commitment to the peace process and reflected that the House of Friendship, where Friday’s meeting was held, served as the venue for the 1991 Alma Ata document that defined the post-Soviet borders and is currently being pushed by Yerevan to be the basis for the border delimitation process between the two countries.
“It is very symbolic that we are meeting today in this beautiful city of Almaty, and furthermore, in the same ‘House of Friendship’ building where the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration was signed. I would like to remind you that this is the document which was signed by the then-former USSR republics, among others recognizing the former administrative borders as interstate borders between independent countries,” Mirzoyan said.
“It is important that during past two years both the Prime-Minister of Armenia and the President of Azerbaijan, on several platforms, have reconfirmed their commitment to the Alma-Ata Declaration, reconfirmed the recognition of territorial integrity based on the Alma-Ata Declaration as well as reconfirmed that the process delimitation of borders should be carried out based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. In principle, it means that during the delimitation process, the borders which existed at the moment of dissolution of the USSR should be reproduced on the ground,” added Mirzoyan.
“I want to emphasize again that Armenia’s efforts are aimed at peace, at concluding a peace treaty. We are engaged in the peace process very constructively, and even more, we should go beyond signing the peace treaty and open the transport communications in the region,” the Armenian foreign minister stressed.
“We should, we can do that with the understanding that all the infrastructures should remain and operate under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the states through the territory of which they will be passing, and all the border crossing procedures should be agreed upon in accordance with the principle of reciprocity,” Mirzoyan added.
For his part, Bayramov expressed confidence that he and Mirzoyan “will work productively in the next two days to find solutions to outstanding issues.”
Bayramov also stressed the importance of an April 19 agreement, as a result of which Armenian ceded four village in the Tavush Province, as the start of the border delimitation process.
The move has sparked wide-spread protests in Armenia, with tens of thousands of Armenians, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, the Primate of the Tavush Diocese, advancing the “Tavush for the Homeland” movement.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov are expected to continue their talks in Almaty on Saturday.
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Thousands of people demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation again rallied in Yerevan on Friday on the second day of demonstrations led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and backed by virtually all Armenian opposition groups.
Galstanyan reiterated those demands as he addressed the protesters in the city’s central Republic Square in the evening. He charged that Pashinyan lost legitimacy after deciding to hand over several disputed border areas to Azerbaijan. He pointed out that the premier had pledged not to make such concessions in the run-up to the last general elections held in 2021.
Accordingly, the outspoken cleric wearing an unusual white priest robe vowed to continue campaigning for Pashinyan’s removal from power. At the same time, he urged supporters to demonstrate “patience” and brace themselves for sustained street protests that could last longer than many of them expected.
Arch. Bagrat Galstanyan addresses the rally on May 10
“We will be moving forward step by step,” he said. “We won’t get tired.”
Galstanyan scheduled the next Republic Square rally for Sunday. In the meantime, he said, he will meet with opposition leaders as well as retired diplomats and security officials supporting his movement to discuss “organizational issues.”
Earlier in the day, a smaller number of protesters led by Galstanyan marched to Armenia’s main state-run universities to again urge their students and faculties to boycott classes and join the protests.
Although there were no indications of a widespread boycott of classes, some students appeared to join the march. A group of them staged a separate protest at the Yerevan State University campus. A trade union of YSU employees issued a statement backing the boycott and warning the university administration against reprisals.
“We must continue our civil disobedience actions,” Galstanyan told reporters. “We cannot retreat and back down in any way.”
Galstanyan and antigovernment activists accompanying him attracted a massive crowd to Republic Square on Thursday when they reached Yerevan following a five-day march that began in Kirants, one of the villages in the northern Tavush province adjacent to the border areas which Pashinyan’s government wants to cede to Azerbaijan. Galstanyan for the first time demanded Pashinyan’s resignation during that rally. The two opposition groups represented in the Armenian parliament were quick to assure him to that they will try to initiate a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
“The impeachment process is under discussion,” Gegham Manukyan of the opposition Hayastan alliance told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Legal and technical issues will be clarified later.”
Hayastan and the other parliamentary opposition force, Pativ Unem, hold only 35 of the parliament’s 107 seats. Virtually all other seats are controlled by Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party. The opposition lacks a single vote to put a formal motion of censure and thus force a parliamentary debate on the issue.
Senior lawmakers representing Civil Contract insisted on Friday that neither they nor any of their pro-government colleagues will break ranks to vote against Pashinyan. One of them, Gagik Melkonyan, suggested that Pashinyan could bow to the pressure only if at least 400,000 people take to the streets to demand his resignation.
Another Civil Contract lawmaker, Artur Hovannisyan, claimed that the ongoing antigovernment protests are coordinated by the Armenian Apostolic Church and former Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian, who lead Hayastan and Pativ Unem respectively. He said they are trying to “stage a coup by undemocratic means.”
The Armenian constitution also stipulates that parliament factions demanding a no-confidence vote must nominate a candidate for the post of prime minister. Opposition leaders insisted that they have not yet discussed any such nominees with Galstanyan. The latter was coy about the extraordinary possibility of his own candidacy when he spoke to journalists throughout the day.
Significantly, Galstanyan confirmed reports that he holds not only Armenian but also Canadian citizenship. The constitution bars dual citizens from serving as prime minister.
Galstanyan, who lived in Canada from 2003-2013 and now heads the church’s Tavush Diocese, has faced scathing attacks from Pashinyan’s political allies ever since the outbreak of the protests against the territorial concessions to Baku on April 20. During an April 30 session of the National Assembly, Civil Contract deputies branded him a Russian spy, accused him of provoking another war with Azerbaijan and even called on Armenian border guards to forcibly draft the 52-year-old archbishop.
Thousands of protesters in Armenia demand the prime minister’s resignation over Azerbaijan dispute Lewiston Morning Tribune