Month: October 2023

MOSCOW

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has refused to attend Thursday’s meeting on the Karabakh settlement in Granada, Spain, in which the participation of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and leaders from EU, France and Germany was expected.

Azerbaijan insisted on Türkiye’s participation too but Germany and France strongly opposed it, Azerbaijani news agencies reported on Wednesday, citing sources in the presidential administration.

Baku said it does not see the need to participate in negotiations of this format after pro-Armenian statements by French officials, a visit by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna to Armenia, statements about the supply of weapons and ammunition, and accusations by the President of EU Council Charles Michel against Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan does not need such a format. Baku sees no need to discuss the problems of the region with countries far from the region,” the Azerbaijani presidency was quoted as saying.

It was suggested that Karabakh issues should be discussed and resolved within the region, and Azerbaijan could participate if the former trilateral format of the EU-Azerbaijan-Armenia dialogue is revived.

Any format in which France participates is unacceptable for Azerbaijan, the reports stressed.

The Azerbaijani army initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh on Sept. 19 to establish constitutional order in the region.

Illegal Armenian armed forces in Karabakh surrendered after the 24-hour operation.

Following the operation, Azerbaijan, having established full sovereignty in the region, has called on the Armenian population to become part of Azerbaijani society.

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“This was a limited, local, counter-terrorism action,” Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to the Azerbaijani president, told the BBC. Azerbaijan “had only targeted legitimate military targets,” he said, and avoided using heavy weapons like tanks in favour of light infantry.

09:37, 4 October 2023

A wreck of a van was abandoned on the side of the road on the outskirts of the city of Stepanakert, retaken last week by Azeri troops, during an Azeri government organised media trip, in Azerbaijan’s controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh, on Monday. — AFP photo

Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh said on Monday their officials would stay in the region after Azerbaijan’s offensive for rescue operations, as Yerevan reported ‘casualties’ in a border shoot out with Baku’s forces. 

Separatists says over 200 people were killed in fighting Azerbaijan late last month and that a further 170 died when a fuel depot exploded as scores of civilians fled Karabakh over fears of ethnic cleansing.

After three decades of Armenian control, the separatist authorities have agreed to disarm, dissolve their government and reintegrate with Azerbaijan in the wake of Baku’s one-day military operation in late September.

Almost all of the around 1,20,000 residents of the mountainous region fled after Baku’s offensive.

The separatist government however said leader Samvel Shahramanyan will stay in Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert with a group of officials ‘until the search and rescue operations for the remainder of those killed and those missing’ were completed.

‘The government continues to focus on the issue of those citizens who want to move to the Republic of Armenia,’ the government added in a statement.

Separatist official Artak Beglaryan said ‘a few hundred’ Armenian representatives remained in Karabakh.

He said they included ‘officials, emergency service, volunteers, some persons with special needs.’

Separatist official Artak Beglaryan said ‘a few hundred’ Armenian representatives remained in Karabakh.

He said they included ‘officials, emergency service, volunteers, some persons with special needs.’

Yerevan reported ‘casualties’ on its side, saying Azerbaijani forces had fired on ‘a vehicle carrying food’ for its soldiers in a border region.

Armenia said the incident took place near the eastern village of Kut. Azerbaijan rejected the claim.

Yerevan has accused Azerbaijan of conducting a campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ to clear Karabakh of its Armenian population.

Baku has denied the claim and called on Armenian residents of the territory to stay and ‘re-integrate’ into Azerbaijan, saying their rights would be guaranteed. 

AFP journalists on Monday saw a convoy carrying water and communications workers that was allowed to enter Stepanakert.

The convoy was escorted by the Azerbaijani army.

They also saw a bus carrying officials who planned to open a ‘re-integration’ office in the city for any ethnic Armenians wishing to register with Azerbaijani authorities.

Azerbaijan is holding ‘re-integration’ talks with separatist leaders.

Several senior representatives of its former government and military command have been detained, including Ruben Vardanyan — a reported billionaire who headed the Nagorno-Karabakh government between November 2022 and February.

His four children released a statement on social media Monday demanding his release ‘from the illegal imprisonment on the territory of Azerbaijan’, saying they ‘feared for his life and health.’

Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General Kamran Aliyev said criminal investigations had been initiated into war crimes committed by 300 separatist officials.

‘I urge those persons to surrender voluntarily,’ he told journalists on Sunday.

Caucasus analysts are weighing up whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan means what he says when he states that Turkey and Azerbaijan would settle for a land corridor that links their two countries via Iran rather than Armenia.

Earlier this week—with Armenia facing a grave crisis with tens of thousands of Nagorno-Karabakh refugees pouring over the border following the Azerbaijani military blitz that retook control of their enclave homeland—Erdogan and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev hinted that they would push for Armenia to accept their long desired “Zangezur Corridor”. This envisaged link would connect mainland Azerbaijan with Turkey via Armenian territory and the Azerbaijani Nakhchivan exclave.

However, as Erdogan returned to Turkey from a meeting with Aliyev in Nakhchivan—where on September 25 the two presidents jointly opened a modernised Azerbaijani military installation—he spoke with reporters accompanying him, saying that the land bridge project could be realised even without the use of Armenian territory. “If Armenia does not pave the way for [the corridor], where will it pass through? It will pass through Iran,” Turkish media reported him as saying. “Iran currently considers this positively. So, it would be possible to pass from Iran to Azerbaijan,” he added.

At a cabinet meeting later the same day, Erdogan reiterated the statement.

RFE/RL noted that a September 17 article on Haqqin.az, a website associated with Azerbaijan’s security services, differentiated between a “Western Zangezur Corridor” passing through Armenia’s Syunik province and an “Eastern Zangezur Corridor” taking a route through Iran.

The piece concluded: “If Yerevan continues to delay the opening of the Western Zangezur Corridor, then Azerbaijan will open the Eastern Zangezur Corridor with Iran, which means that Armenia will remain outside of yet another strategic project and will once again be a loser.”

A senior official in Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to RFE/RL that the Iranian route would be acceptable for Baku. “The ball is in Armenia’s court. If this country wants to establish overland communication with the outside world after 30 years of self-imposed isolation, they have to live up to their obligations on the Zangezur Corridor. If not, the communication will be established anyway, but in this case via Iran thus bypassing Armenia,” the official was cited as saying.

Armenia is concerned that an agreement for a Western Zangezur Corridor running across its territory would mean a loss of sovereignty if it was unable to monitor traffic on the road and planned railway. But the quoted official dismissed this anxiety as a secondary concern, saying it would be a matter for negotiations. “The most important [thing] is the opening of the traffic itself,” the official added.

One hypothesis advanced by analysts is that Aliyev is wary of putting too much pressure on Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan in the wake of Azerbaijan’s crushing of what was left of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh (the name the ethnic-Armenians gave to their internationally unrecognised breakaway state) because he does not want to see Pashinyan toppled amid Armenian outrage over the fate of the enclave and replaced by a revanchist administration that might have designs on launching an attempt to take back the lost lands.

“Aliyev will give Armenia a bit of time to handle domestic unrest,” Fuad Shahbaz, a Baku-based political analyst, told RFE/RL, noting that Aliyev conspicuously praised Pashinyan—who during the Azerbaijani offensive in Karabakh announced publicly that Armenian armed forces would not intervene—in a victory address to the nation on September 20, saying: “During this period, today and yesterday, Armenia has unexpectedly shown political competence, which we appreciate.”

But the fear remains that Aliyev and Erdogan are just biding their time and, when the international spotlight is not shining so brightly on the fate of the “Artsakh Armenians”, will return to their demand that a Western Zangezur Corridor, running through Armenia, must be accepted.

Should that happen, however, they would likely be dealing not only with Armenian objections. Iran too has so far objected to the idea of a  corridor running across Armenia, a short distance from the parallel Armenia-Iran border, fearing it would disrupt transit routes used by Iranian traders and open the way to more Turkish geopolitical influence in what it sees as its South Caucasus backyard.

Zangezur is important to Turkey in that it would give the country direct passage to both “brother nation” Azerbaijan and the Turkic-speaking nations of Central Asia, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. 

High-level diplomats from the United States, European Union and Russia held a secret meeting in Istanbul two days before Azerbaijan launched a large-scale attack on Artsakh that has resulted in the almost complete depopulation of Artsakh, politico.eu reported late Tuesday.

A senior diplomat with knowledge of the discussions told Politico the secret talks took place on September 17 in Istanbul as part of efforts to pressure Azerbaijan to end its nine-month blockade of Artsakh and allow humanitarian aid convoys from Armenia to deliver aid.

“According to the envoy, the meeting focused on ‘how to get the bloody trucks moving’ and ensure supplies of food and fuel” could reach the Artsakh residents, Politico reported.

Politico revealed that the U.S. was represented by Louis Bono, Washington’s senior adviser for Caucasus negotiations, while the EU dispatched Toivo Klaar, its representative for the region. Russia, meanwhile, sent Igor Khovaev, who serves as Putin’s special envoy on relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In a statement, an EU official told Politico that “we believe it is important to maintain channels of communications with relevant interlocutors to avoid misunderstandings.” The official also observed Klaar had sought to keep open lines of communication on numerous fronts over the “past years,” including in talks with Khovaev and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department declined to comment on the meeting, saying only that “we do not comment on private diplomatic discussions.”

However, a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity by Politico to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters explained the discussions came out of an understanding that the Kremlin still holds sway in the region.

“We need to be able to work with the Russians on this because they do have influence over the parties, especially as we’re at a precarious moment right now,” the U.S. official told Politico.

Since Azerbaijan’s attack on September 19, however, Russia has blamed Yerevan for the situation in Artsakh, while the U.S. and the EU have, on the one hand, hardened their criticism of Baku while pressing for a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Former Nagorno-Karabakh leaders Arkadi Gukasian (left), Bako Sahakian (center), and Arayik Harutiunian (file photo)

Former Nagorno-Karabakh leaders Arkadi Gukasian (left), Bako Sahakian (center), and Arayik Harutiunian (file photo)