On January 23 Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev received chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of Poland, general Franchishek Gagor, said the press service for the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan.
As is reported, the meeting was attended by Poland’s ambassador to Azerbaijan Kshishtof Krayevski. (more…)
Echoing statements by his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said on Wednesday that Armenia and Turkey have come close to normalizing their historically strained relations. He also dismissed Ankara’s warnings that the new U.S. administration will set back the process if it recognizes the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
The two neighbors embarked on a dramatic rapprochement last year culminating in Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s historic September trip to Yerevan. In a series of follow-up negotiations, Nalbandian and Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan reportedly made further progress towards the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border.
“Turkey and Armenia have never been closer to a plan on normalizing relations,” Babacan stated late last week.
Commenting on this statement, Nalbandian said Yerevan continues to stand for an unconditional normalization of bilateral ties. “Our position is unchanged and we expect the same approach from Turkey,” he told a news conference. “In that case, we are really very close to solving the issue. In that sense, I share Babacan’s view that we are very close to normalizing relations.”
But he stressed that Ankara should drop its preconditions for diplomatic relations and an open border if the process is to reach a successful conclusion. A resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan has been one of those preconditions.
Turkey also wants an end to the decades-long Armenian campaign for international recognition of the 1915 genocide. Babacan warned that U.S. President Barack Obama “will harm the process” if he honors his election campaign pledge to term the Armenian massacres a genocide once in office.
Nalbandian disagreed with that. “If there is a genuine desire to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia, then nothing can impede that,” he said.
The minister also sounded a note of caution about international mediators’ stated hopes to broker a framework agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh in the first half of this year. Matthew Bryza, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, told RFE/RL on Tuesday that the mediators “try to have it signed in the beginning of summer.” He said the success of those efforts depends not only on the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan but public support in both countries for the proposed basic principles of a Karabakh settlement.
“The societies will be presented with principles that have been agreed on,” said Nalbandian. “Negotiations are continuing on the basis of the principles proposed by the co-chairs, and there is no agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
“If we reach such agreements, we will come to a point where they will be presented to the publics in both Armenia and Karabakh,” he added. “And if there is popular support for them, the leadership will be able to make some decisions. But I wouldn’t set any time frames.”
https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1599404.html
Caucasus Update No. 18, Jan. 19, 2009, published by Caucasian Review of International Affairs (www.cria-online.org)
In early January, a number of Azerbaijani news outlets reported that Russia had, throughout 2008, transferred an estimated $800 million worth of military hardware to Azerbaijan’s rival Armenia. The story is murky, but an Azeri media organisation received a list of equipment allegedly supplied, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, grenade launchers, ammunition, and rockets. At the time of writing, the Russian response had been mixed: some carefully worded denials from the Foreign Ministry, promises of clarification from the Russian embassy in Baku, and stonewalling from the Defence Ministry. Russia’s overall approach has been moving towards denial, but the lack of an outright, immediate statement has inevitably fanned the flames of rumour. The Azerbaijani armed forces allegedly put their forces on high alert in response.
If the story is true, the implications could be significant. The peace process over Nagorno-Karabakh is in an extremely delicate phase, and Russia has recently gone to great lengths to depict itself as an impartial mediator. Any truth in the arms transfer rumours would destroy Moscow’s reputation as an honest broker and undo much of the tentative progress that has been recently achieved.
The military implications are also significant, since the size of the transfer would go some way towards redressing the huge growth in Azerbaijan’s armed forces in recent years. Precise, up-to-date figures are very difficult to come by, given the opaque nature of both countries’ defence sectors, the difficulties of gathering information on Armenian forces in Karabakh, and the rapid expansion of armed forces. But most independent estimates give Azerbaijan the quantitative edge over Armenia, particularly in terms of heavy equipment.
A far more significant factor, and arguably a key reason for the lack of major combat since 1994, is the topography of the Karabakh region. The ceasefire line currently runs through rugged, mountainous terrain topped with multiple defensive lines which would favour the Armenian side in any war launched by Baku. Azerbaijan’s purchase of 25 Su-25 ground attack aircraft from Georgia and unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel should be seen in this context: as an attempt to maintain air superiority and therefore compensate for the difficulties of ground artillery in such terrain. Turkey has also offered to upgrade the Azerbaijani air force, alongside its other assistance in the fields of education and technical support.
The Russian 102nd Army base in Armenia has played a huge role in assisting and upgrading Armenia’s military so far. The base’s inventory of hardware was boosted in 2005 when Russia closed its bases in Georgia and transferred 370 pieces of equipment to the 102nd base. The forces at the base are militarily very significant: 74 tanks, 224 armoured combat vehicles, 60 towed artillery systems, 14 aircraft and the advanced S-300 missile system. Although the limited number of Russian personnel there would prohibit a large-scale deployment of this equipment, it is possible that the 102nd would, in the event of war, ‘lend’ the equipment to Armenia’s armed forces under the terms of the Russo-Armenian military alliance. There are also estimated to be huge – relative to the territory’s size – number of tanks and other pieces of hardware within Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions. This allows Armenia to circumvent its restrictions on such equipment under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, although it has accused Azerbaijan of doing the same.
Georgia has a critical and often under-realised role in any potential conflict for a number of reasons. Firstly, in the aftermath of the August war it suspended most Russian flights over Georgian territory to the 102nd base, preventing the base from receiving critical military supplies: therefore the figures given for the Russian base should be taken with a pinch of salt. More broadly, as military analyst Roger McDermott notes, the transfer of any equipment from northern states such as Ukraine to Armenia could be blocked by Georgia, since they would have to be shipped through Georgian territory from a Black Sea port, although such a deal was confirmed in November.
Secondly, and related to this, Tbilisi will have to make a clear and difficult choice in any renewed war between Baku and Yerevan. Georgia has no interest in spoiling its ties with Yerevan, and has expressed interest in defence co-operation (for instance, on upgrading Armenian tanks in a Georgian plant). But these links cause friction with Azerbaijan, with whom Georgia has a close economic and political relationship. Georgia relies on Azerbaijan for its own gas supplies and for the transit of Azeri gas and oil through the BTC and BTE pipelines, which bring in vital transit fees for Georgia’s struggling economy. Supporting Armenia could lead Baku (in the name of ‘energy security’) to re-route its gas and oil flows through Russia. It therefore seems likely that Georgia would support Azerbaijan, perhaps closing its border with Armenia and leaving the country almost entirely isolated from the outside world.
Even if the rumours of the $800 million arms transfers are false, the Karabakh conflict is incredibly volatile. The military balance between the two sides remains difficult to assess, but its uncertain nature, along with the peace process, has managed to prevent either side from reigniting a major conflict. If Russia really has shipped such a quantity of equipment to Armenia, the prospects for peace are grim. This would raise tensions on the ground and give further weight to hawks in the Azeri defence forces who argue that Azerbaijan’s military is sufficient, and that Baku should strike now to liberate the occupied territories before Armenia can reinforce itself any further. Perhaps even more disastrously, the transfer would fatally damage Moscow’s reputation as an honest broker and would remove the constraining brake of the peace process from a highly dangerous arms race. Nobody – Azerbaijan, Russia, or Armenia – would benefit.
Azerbaijan on Thursday made a “strong protest” to Russia over weapons transfers it said Moscow had made to Armenia in violation of United Nations resolutions.
“The Azerbaijani foreign ministry voices strong protest in connection with the transfer of arms to Armenia and calls on Russia to take all necessary steps to avert the consequences,” the ministry said in a statement.
On Wednesday Russia’s defense ministry denied Azerbaijani media reports that Moscow had supplied Yerevan with $800 million worth of tanks, armored personnel carriers, rockets, grenade launchers and ammunition via a Russian army base in Armenia, Interfax news agency reported.
“There have been no supplies of Russian weapons to Armenia. The reports alleging this are untrue,” Russian defense ministry spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky said.
Azerbaijan said the alleged weapons transfers violated UN resolutions aimed at preventing a renewal of the conflict over Nagorny Karabakh, where Armenia-backed separatists wrested control from Azerbaijan’s authorities in a war after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
“The transfer of weapons serves to strengthen the military potential of Armenia, which has occupied a part of Azerbaijani territory,” the Azerbaijani ministry said.
Today Russia is the main obstacle on the way to the resolution of the situation in the South Caucasus, said famous Russian political scientist and chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia Heydar Jamal, speaking about the supply of arms to Armenia by Russia free of charge. He said if not for Moscow the Karabakh conflict could have been settled long ago.
The office of the Ankara Public Prosecutor launched Friday an investigation into an Internet campaign to issue a public apology to Armenians.
Six prosecutors submitted a petition calling for a penalty for the organizers of the apology campaign for “insulting the Turkish nation openly” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
The Ankara public prosecutor’s office started an investigation into the issue following the prosecutors’ demand.
Around 200 Turkish academics, writers and journalists launched a website issuing an apology to Armenians regarding the 1915 incidents and called for people to sign on in support.
The efforts of the intellectuals drew fierce reaction in Turkey and incited counter website campaigns, and exhibitions containing information and photographs from studies conducted into the events.
Opening a file in the Article 301, a law that makes insulting Turkishness a crime, requires the permission of the Justice Ministry.
Armenia, with the backing of the diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915.Turkey rejects the claims saying that 300,000 Armenians, along with at least as many Turks, died in civil strife that emerged when Armenians took up arms, backed by Russia, for independence in eastern Anatolia.
The issue remains unsolved as Armenia drags its feet on accepting Turkey’s proposal to form an independent commission to investigate the claims.
Hurriyet Daily News Online