ARS Prioritizes Assisting Artsakh Armenians as its Main Objective – Asbarez.com Asbarez Armenian News
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The Armenian Relief Society Central Executive held its third plenary session from January 9 to 13 at its headquarters in Watertown, Mass. The meeting extensively discussed ARS’ organizational and public relations efforts and reevaluated its current and future programs in the homeland and Diaspora.
Projects to assist the forcibly displaced Artsakh Armenians, who are at the forefront and special focus of the Central Executive, were prioritized during the meeting, which spent most of its agenda addressing them.
Based on the resolutions of the73rd ARS International Convention and emphasizing the national imperative to ensure the return of Artsakh Armenians to their ancestral home, the Central Executive unanimously adopted a decision to provide housing for displaced Artsakh Armenians in villages in Armenia.
The meeting also decided to sponsor a project by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau’s Youth Office aimed at securing jobs and training for young Artsakh Armenians, in the second phase of the program that is called “uplift.”
The ARS Central Executive had the opportunity to meet with members of the ARF Bureau, Khajag Mgrdichian and Mgrdich Mgdrdichian, who were joined by the ARF Bureau’s liaison to the ARS, Raffi Donabedian.
The prime minister of Armenia and Georgia, Nikol Pashinyan and Irakli Garibashvili, signed a strategic partnership agreement in Tbilisi on Friday.
The agreement is to promote further cooperation between the neighboring countries in the spheres of economy, diplomacy and security, including the delimitation of borders between the two countries, which Pashinyan said Yerevan and Tbilisi will undertake.
“The economic cooperation between our countries has great potential, and our task is to contribute to its full disclosure and implementation. In this regard, the intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation has an important place in deepening and strengthening the economic ties between the sides,” Pashinyan said during remarks.
“I would like to state with satisfaction that the agenda of the session of the intergovernmental commission is quite inclusive and covers such areas of bilateral cooperation as transport, communication, energy, information technology, healthcare, tourism, agriculture, education and science, culture, environmental protection, etc. I attach importance to the full implementation of the agreements reached within the framework of the session, which will give new quality and substance to the relations between our countries,” added Pashinyan.
“I am happy to report that last year the volume of trade between the two countries exceeded $1 billion. I am sure that this is not the maximum, and in the coming years, the positive dynamics of the trade turnover will be preserved, thanks to the growth of the economies of the two countries and the deepening of interaction,” the Armenian prime minister said.
He also discussed the issue of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, saying that he hoped that Baku will return to the negotiating table after the scheduled presidential elections in Azerbaijan next month.
Garibashvili said his country supports the peace talks between Yerevan and Baku and offered assistance in advancing the process, saying that such an effort would only increase the region’s security and prospects of peace.
Russia’s foreign ministry on Friday it has extended an invitation to Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan to take part in peace talks with Azerbaijan.
“Ararat Samvelovich Mirzoyan was invited to Moscow for consultations on issues of the peace treaty many times, starting from last September,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “Among other things, that was discussed during bilateral contacts at various levels. The last signal was sent to Yerevan literally a few days ago.”
Russian officials have been urging Yerevan to attend peace talks mediated by Moscow as the tug-of-war between the West and Russia intensifies. Azerbaijan has all but rebuffed European and American efforts to mediate peace talks, canceling scheduled meetings in Spain and Washington last fall.
Official Moscow has criticized Yerevan’s efforts to seek Western mediation for the talks, warning, at times, that the European Union and the United States do not have the best interests of Armenia and are using the conflict to create a rift between Russia and Armenia.
During a press conference earlier this week, Mirzoyan said that there has been a “regression” by Baku in resuming peace talks. He added that for Yerevan the venue of the talks was not important, as long as the sides resume talks for a peace treaty.
Zakharova’s statement on Friday suggests that Yerevan has not responded to Moscow offer to host talks, which last week Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov claimed were agreed to by Baku.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson also emphasized that Moscow continues to remain Yerevan’s partner.
She said Russia has had “a decisive contribution in the cessation of hostilities—in particular in the fall of 2020—and has had a more decisive contribution in an even more difficult situation—one might even say, in preventing the defeat of Armenia.”
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Azerbaijan dismissed on Friday Armenia’s decision to provide it with more maps of Armenian minefields in and around Nagorno-Karabakh made in response to Azerbaijani demands for such information.
Baku renewed those demands earlier this month after reporting that another Azerbaijani civilian hit a landmine in the Karabakh conflict zone and was injured as a result. It called for international pressure on Yerevan.
Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said late on Thursday that it has located eight more minefields in recent interviews with Karabakh Armenian military personnel who fled the region along its entire civilian population following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive. Their maps will be passed on to the Azerbaijani side “in the coming days,” the NSS said in a statement.
The statement came the day after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited the NSS headquarters in Yerevan and met with the security agency’s leadership. Pashinyan signaled last week his readiness to make more concessions to Azerbaijan. On January 13, he accused Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev of laying claim to Armenian territory.
Responding to the NSS statement, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said that Armenia is still not serious about helping Azerbaijan clear the territories recaptured by it during the 2020 war and last September of landmines.
“This step cannot be assessed as a confidence-building measure,” it said. “Azerbaijan expects Armenia to present concrete maps of all mined territories.”
The ministry claimed that minefield maps provided by the Armenian side earlier are very inaccurate.
Yerevan shared that information with Baku in 2021 in return for the release of dozens of Armenian prisoners of war. The NSS statement suggests that it is not linking the fresh data on minefields with the repatriation of at least 23 other Armenian captives remaining in Azerbaijan.
They include eight former political and military leaders of Karabakh detained following the Azerbaijani assault. Azerbaijani courts on Thursday extended their pre-trial detention by another four months. The country’s prosecutor-general said on Friday that they must stand trial for their “crimes against the Azerbaijani people.”
The Armenian government strongly condemned the arrests and urged the international community to help free the Karabakh leaders. But it does not seem to be raising the issue in ongoing contacts with Baku on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
Siranush Sahakyan, an Armenian human rights lawyer dealing with the captives, suggested that their release is not a top priority for Pashinyan’s administration now. She said Baku is using the issue to try to clinch more concessions from Yerevan.
“I share the view that there were going to be concession regardless of the issue of the captives,” Sahakian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “It’s just that the issue is being used for selling those concessions to the public.”
Pashinyan’s political opponents say that Armenia is not gaining anything in exchange for those concessions and that this appeasement policy will not lead to a lasting peace between the two South Caucasus nations.
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