Why Washington Must Push Forward the Fragile Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Plan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Day: July 3, 2024
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia is discussing with the United States the possibility of building a new, U.S.-designed nuclear plant that would replace its aging facility at Metsamor, a senior Armenian official said on Wednesday.
“We have entered a very substantive phase,” Armen Grigoryan, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, told a conference in Yerevan. “We are now discussing with the United States putting in place a legal framework. Without a legal framework, we can’t move forward.”
“I can say that the ball is now in the U.S. court. We expect that they will go through internal U.S. procedures before we begin our work,” he added without giving any details.
The Metsamor nuclear plant, which generates roughly 40 percent of Armenia’s electricity, went into service in 1980 and is due to be decommissioned in 2036. The Armenian government announced in April 2022 plans to build a new nuclear plant by that time.
The U.S. has shown an interest in the ambitious project, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan signing in May 2022 a memorandum of understanding on “strategic nuclear cooperation” between their countries. A senior U.S. State Department official said a year later that Washington is “assessing the feasibility” of building a nuclear plant equipped with small modular reactors (SMRs) in Armenia. She said the US technology could make the South Caucasus nation less dependent on Russia for energy.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced afterwards that an Armenian government delegation will visit the U.S. soon to take a close look at local SMRs. He suggested that they could be more affordable for Armenia than the much more powerful nuclear facilities built by Russia.
In June 2023, Pashinyan set up a working group tasked with exploring various options for building the new facility, including the SMRs, and submit its findings to the prime minister’s staff within two months. No such findings have been made public since then.
In May this year, Pashinyan’s government announced that it is negotiating with the U.S., Russia and South Korea on the project. It did not elaborate.
The U.S. company NuScale Power Corp planned to build America’s first SMR plant in Idaho by 2030. It was due to consist of six reactors with a combined capacity of 462 megawatts. However, the company cancelled the project last November, saying that it has not attracted enough utilities interested in buying electricity from the would-be plant.
NuScale revised the cost of the project from $5.3 billion to $9.3 billion in January 2023. The revised figure exceeds Armenia’s annual state budget.
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The Russian foreign ministry on Wednesday slammed NATO for attempting to cut off Armenia and Azerbaijan from their alliance and cooperation with Russia.
By inviting Azerbaijan and Armenia to the NATO summit, the West wants to cut them off from cooperation with Russia, Andrey Nastasin, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said at a press briefing on Wednesday, saying this is “another attempt by the Americans to spread their destructive influence in all regions of the world.”
Amid growing tensions between Yerevan and Moscow, it was announced last week that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has invited Armenia and Azerbaijan to a NATO Summit in Washington later this month. Armenia’s foreign ministry said that Yerevan has accepted the invitation and will attend. Baku thus far has not signaled that it will participate.
The spokesperson also took aim at the Baltic countries for advancing NATO’s agenda, saying those nations are “implementing a destructive policy in the South Caucasus.
This comes as Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan visited Estonia earlier this week and later met with other Baltic state leaders in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Nastasin, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said the Baltic countries “are doing their utmost to ‘cut off’ Armenia from Russia, remove it from our shared integration mechanisms, including the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and integrating [Armenia] with a Euro-Atlantic perspective.”
He also went on to accuse NATO of arming Armenia assisting Yerevan in rebuilding its defense sector, while NATO-member diplomats visit Baku to cultivate relations.
Nastasin said that NATO’s approaches are further deepening the “tensions between the two republics, do not contribute to the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks and provoke an arms race in the region.”
He reiterated Moscow’s position that the universal basis for the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains the tripartite agreements of 2020 and 2022, adding that Moscow is convinced that stability and security in the South Caucasus can and should be ensured by the countries of the region—and within the framework of the principle of regional accountability.
“Imposing of their ‘prescriptions’ by Euro-Atlantic officials, who are far from understanding the nuances of the region, will lead to new dividing lines in the South Caucasus and will have devastating consequences not only for the region, but also for pan-Eurasian security. We hope that Baku and Yerevan understand it well,” said Nastasin.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk said his country continues to regard Armenia as an ally, citing the continuous and rapid growth of trade between the two countries.
“We proceed with the fact that Armenia is our ally,” Overchuk told Russian media. “And we observe the fact that we have very positive economic relations. Our [2023] trade turnover with Armenia is $7.3 billion. If we look at the statistics for January-April [2024,] it doubled compared with [the same period of] last year.”
Overchuk went on to praise Yerevan’s “very constructive contribution” to the Eurasian Economic Union, the Russian-led trade bloc comprising Russia, Armenia and three other former Soviet states. Earlier this year, Armenia assumed the EEU’s rotating presidency.
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President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Wednesday said his country and government are always ready to assist Armenia and Azerbaijan to accelerate the peace talks.
Putin made the remarks during a meeting with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit currently underway in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“We are always ready to continuously support the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and to advance the peace agenda,” Putin said.
The Russian leader also praised relations with Azerbaijan, saying that if the two leaders met every month there would ample issues to discuss.
“We discussed the North-South project in Moscow last time. There have been positive developments since then, and we will talk about that,” Aliyev was quoted as saying by the APA news agency.
“We are determined to expand the infrastructure of the corridor on the Azerbaijani territory. Although it physically exists, it does not correspond to the intentions of our partners and neighbors to maximize the use of this project,” the Azerbaijani leader added.
Putin also praised Aliyev for advancing the teaching of the Russian language in Azerbaijan, with Aliyev pledging that his government has plans to increase the use and education of Russian within its school system.
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