2023 June 23

Daily news wrap-up

(1) Kocharyan's plan to exchange Meghri: Former PM discloses private convo. (2) How Azerbaijan demined Ukraine's south before Feb. 2022 invasion, paved the way for Russian tanks, became "strategic ally" of Moscow, and "exaggerated" the volume of aid to Ukraine. (3) New "AzovStal" plant in Armenia.
by ar_david_hh

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interview with ex-prime minister Aram Sargsyan / Meghri for Karabakh and Lachin / Russia's role / Meetings with Minsk Group co-chairs

REPORTER: In his [opening statement](https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/14eypwv/tldr_pashinyan_reveals_details_from_the_2020/), Pashinyan cited parts of the plan to exchange Meghri with Artsakh [Nagorno Karabakh]. He said the document was from August-November 1999, and that the discussions around the exchange ended in 2001. What do you know about this?

SARGSYAN: There was, in fact, a plan to exchange Meghri for Artsakh. Kocharyan's denial now is shameful. He was actively trying to convince me and 5 other members of the Security Council that an exchange would be a great idea because it would grant independence to Artsakh.

REPORTER: Was Armenia supposed to surrender towns and roads in southern Syunik, near Meghri?

SARGSYAN: There were 3 possible scenarios:

1) The main option. Exchange the Meghri region with the Lachin region. Artsakh gains independence.

2) MFA Vardan Oskanyan presented the second option to the 4-5 members of the Security Council. I've testified about this to the October 27 investigation committee. I even disclosed the classified schemes presented by Vardan Oskanyan.

So what was in this second option? There would be a "point zero" in Meghri that wouldn't belong to any country. Like an international area. It wasn't very clearly defined.

3) point zero would be not in Meghri [southern Armenia], but in the narrowest link separating Azerbaijan from Nakhijevan. This is the region near Tegh village. They would choose an uninhabited area for the exchange.

There was another option to build a highway estacade proposed later during negotiations. Constitutional Court president Gagik Harutyunyan had his input on these options.

The plan proposed by Robert Kocharyan, the one he believed would be the best, was the exchange of the Meghri region with the Lachin region and Artsakh's independence [option 1].

Kocharyan and the witnesses from the Security Council must come forward and admit this if they love their country. End the lies now.

I believe it is a sin to disclose details from a private conversation, but I'll make an exception now because this is important for our Republic. I will declassify our conversation.

I [prime minister] met Kocharyan [president] in his cabinet. He began to convince me that the exchange plan was excellent. He said our border with Iran is going to shut down either way, so while we still have a chance we should accept the funds that we were being offered. At the time, the UN was offering $6bn to Armenia and $8bn to Azerbaijan to relocate refugees. While we still have a chance, let's accept the deal and make Artsakh independent, he said.

At first, I thought he was just displaying braggadocio, to make an impression. I thought he took me for someone who wasn't aware of Goble's plan [double corridor concept]. Only later did I realize that what he was referring to was unrelated to Goble's plan.

Kocharyan told me that he drew that plan himself. He said he spent lots of time and resources on it. He paid a Czech journalist to bring that plan to Heydar Aliyev's attention. During one of the OSCE Minsk Group meetings, Kocharyan [pretending to be clueless] informed Heydar that a certain document had reached his table suggesting a swap between the Meghri region and Lachin/Artsakh, and Kocharyan asked Heydar if he knew anything about it. Heydar told him that he received the same document.

I have just committed a sin by disclosing this. If Kocharyan tries to deny this, he will sin, too. Kocharyan fully supported the exchange.

Moreover, the Meghri exchange document cited by Pashinyan was part of this discussion. Kocharyan negotiated only around that document. He wasn't interested in the other options [other options = point zero international hub, or corridor via Tegh instead of Meghri].

REPORTER: Kocharyan was the author of the Meghti exchange plan?

SARGSYAN: Yes.

REPORTER: Kocharyan claims the Meghri for Lachin/Artsakh exchange plan was offered by Heydar Aliyev, and that it was never discussed under the OSCE Minsk Group because he rejected it.

SARGSYAN: Hah, what a shame. A former president of Armenia should not lie like that. Like a coward, he is claiming it wasn't him who told me all of that, that it wasn't him who called the exchange a "great idea".

Do you know how the Meghri plan became a topic of discussion within Armenia? I was the one to disclose it after October 27. At the time, I was one of the main figures in that process. As a newly appointed prime minister, after two months, I traveled to Meghri and disclosed the existence of that plan while promising to stop it by doing everything in my power.

Kocharyan fired me for that. They said, "We'll give you anything you want if you voluntarily resign". I said no. I was a prime minister for only 6 months by then. He could not have fired me for my inability to raise the birth rate within just 6 months. A baby needs 9 months to be born; they can't even do that math. They fired me for publicizing the Meghri plan.

The OSCE Minsk Group's co-chairs paid a visit to the government, along with their state ambassadors and 15 staff members. During the meeting, US co-chair Carey Cavanaugh asked me about the general public opinion in Armenia regarding the Meghri exchange plan.

REPORTER: But Kocharyan claims the Meghri plan wasn't a topic of OSCE Minsk discussion, so why was the co-chair asking?

SARGSYAN: Kocharyan is lying. After hearing that question, I told the US co-chair that the Meghri plan is being kept secret from the public because I've been told that the negotiations are still in an advisory phase and that until there is a common agreement, we cannot disclose it, so the public is still unaware. The co-chair then asks me how we plan to resolve the issue of exchange without even knowing the public opinion.

I took that as a hint that it was time for the public to know.

When [the government] first presented me with the exchange plan, I was informed that it was a secret of the highest level. I signed the "non-disclosure" document. It was difficult for me to keep it inside because my brother had just lost his life. So I gave a full confession to the church leader under the condition it would remain secret. I told him about the exchange plan. His response was: "Չըլլալիք բան է։" ["ain't gonna happen"]

REPORTER: So His Holyness Garegin B. can corroborate your statement if necessary?

SARGSYAN: Yes. The exchange was no longer a secret within the HHK party. They knew that Kocharyan was firing me for publicizing the plan. After all this, they dare to utter the name of my brother today. No honor. They knew at that point. I summoned the leaders of every parliamentary party to inform them about the plan.

When I shared the info with ARF's Hrant Margaryan, he fell into hysteria... couldn't believe it was true. The press soon learned that I shared that info with Margaryan. Three days later a journalist asked Margaryan if he could comment on that. Margaryan claimed he knew nothing about it. These peoples' urge to preserve power, to remain close to power, was stronger.

I stand behind my words, I answer in front of God, and I have a responsibility toward our public.

REPORTER: If Vazgen Sargsyan and Karen Demirchyan were the main barriers against the Meghri plan, why didn't the government proceed with the plan after their death?

SARGSYAN: The resistance continued by Vagharshak Harutyunyan [ex-MOD] and me. As a result, I got fired while Vagharshak lost his title as general. They took him to court. We were persecuted after disclosing the fact that this wasn't a Goble-US plan, but rather a Russo-Turkish scheme. This is the Lenin-Ataturk agreement of our era. Today, Russia again wants to have control of the roads.

REPORTER: Pashinyan claims that Kocharyan removed Artsakh from the negotiation table.

SARGSYAN: But do you know WHY Robert Kocharyan was brought to Armenia in the first place? It wasn't Vazgen "instructing" Levon to do so, despite what some people believe. Here is how things unfolded:

Levon Ter-Petrosyan would sometimes visit Artsakh for negotiations and reach an agreement. Upon his return, however, Artsakh would usually break the agreement. An impression eventually formed that it was all just a double game to buy time.

So what did Russia do? They decided to promote a "Shurik" figure: the man who gets in our way, will become our man. That Shurik was Robert Kocharyan. Russia advised Levon to bring Kocharyan to Armenia. Russia also advised Kocharyan to accept the title of prime minister in Armenia. Russia had a resolution plan beneficial to itself and needed Armenians to play along.

REPORTER: After firing you and Vagharshak Harutyunyan, what prevented Kocharyan from realizing the exchange plan?

SARGSYAN: By then it was already too late. The topic became taboo. Had Kocharyan signed it, he would confirm the theory that Vazgen and Karen sacrificed their lives to block the plan.

MFA Vardan Oskanyan met the US State Secretary and begged them to "remove the Meghri exchange plan from the negotiation table". The Secretary asked, "Why, Vardan, wasn't it your plan?" Vardan claimed it wasn't, but now is the right time for him to come clean if he loves his homeland. I don't want to disclose any more details from private meetings with Oskanyan but this information belongs to the public and eventually, the recorded audiotape will be officially released to the public domain.

REPORTER: What tapes?

SARGSYAN: From Oskanyan's meeting with the US Secretary.

Full https://youtu.be/PQM8C5Z2n48

Full https://factor.am/660881.html

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commentary by political analysts Karen Sargsyan and Chibukhchyan / Ukraine war / Artsakh / new metallurgical plant

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Armenian and Azeri delegations will meet in Washington again next week. Azerbaijan has been trying to derail these negotiations by firing at the partially US-owned metallurgical plant that is currently being built on the AM-AZ border. Azerbaijan's calculation was to receive harsh criticism from the US and to use that as an excuse to cancel the planned meeting in Washington [just as they accused France of bias and said they wouldn't meet Macron in the past]. Azerbaijan's hooliganism against the US plant coincided with the somewhat widespread belief, at least at the time, that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was failing. Nevertheless, the US maintained its diplomatic posture and they dragged Azeri MFA to the UK to have a "chat" with him.

SARGSYAN: The shots at the US plant were pursuing the second goal as well. Azeris wanted to persuade the US to recall the employees working on the plant. Their efforts failed, partly thanks to the UK. The UK has been silently helping Armenia despite many of our citizens, who are under Russian media influence, being generally ungrateful towards the UK. People keep dragging the UK through the mud because of British Petroleum's presence in Azerbaijan while forgetting that the British royal investments are in Shell, not BP, and Shell has announced the opening of a branch in Armenia.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Besides that, Russia has multiple companies with a share in Azerbaijan's Shah Denis gas field. They play a far greater role than the British BP, when you calculate their shares.

Something is silently brewing in Ukraine's southern front. Russian MoD Shoygu is publicly concerned about Crimea, there are talks about blowing up the Zaporozhya NPP, Biden says a nuke use is a real possibility, and...

SARGSYAN: Ukrainians are already on the outskirts of Tokmak.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Yes, there are battles and a fog of war. Prigozhin reported infiltration and expressed hope that it was just a small group of Ukrainians. We will have a more clear picture in the coming days. Azerbaijan will not take well the weakening of its ally Moscow on the battlefield.

SARGSYAN: Russia and Azerbaijan signed a strategic alliance agreement just 2 days before the invasion of Ukraine. But there is another important event not widely reported by the press. Azerbaijan's state-run SOCAR energy agency had asked the Ukrainian government for a permit to demine southern Ukraine. Just a month before the invasion, Azeris demined the area near the Ukraine-Crimea line of contact.

Azeris demined Ukraine's Chongar area. You've probably seen that name on the news lately. Ukraine has just struck bridges there to hinder the movement of Russian supplies.

Azerbaijan's demining of Chongar led to the destruction of Ukraine's defenses. That agreement was signed in 2016 under Petro Poroshenko. This story was circulated in Ukraine last year and there were calls to investigate the circumstances. It placed Azerbaijan in a difficult situation.

More recently, I received materials from Ukraine showing displeasure towards Azerbaijan among Ukrainian volunteer army units. They accuse Azerbaijan of lying about the volume of aid to Ukraine. Aliyev had promised large volumes of kerosene as a gift but never delivered anything close.

But that's nothing compared to Chongar demining. Once the Ukrainian public learns about the pre-war events, they will want to impale SOCAR on a stick.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: To put it simply, Russia was able to easily invade southern Ukraine in the early days partly because Azerbaijan had purchased areas north of Crimea and demined it.

SARGSYAN: Basically, Azerbaijan and Russia exchanged Kherson for Karabakh. Putin gifted Karabakh to Aliyev, then Aliyev gifted Kherson and Zaporozhya to Putin.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Will Azerbaijan continue to fire at the US metal plant in Armenia?

SARGSYAN: It depends on how soon Putin leaves this world. As long as that bastard is alive, Azerbaijan will continue to provoke.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Does the US plant act as a "barrier" against Azerbaijan?

SARGSYAN: It's basically AzovStal [a complex metallurgy plant that Russians captured only after wasting lots of time and manpower]. It's not a flatland anymore, it's not going to be suited for a tank advance anymore. When the plant is ready, it'll become a mini-castle. You place a battalion or two, with Kornets or similar anti-vehicle weapons, and they can defend the area. This area used to be defenseless.

Azeris weren't aware that foreign workers were building the plant. They created a diplomatic mess for themselves after wounding those two Indian workers. I don't think they will aim at the workers anymore. Minor "hooliganism" against the building is expected.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Armenia is actively promoting the US-led negotiations. In order to save Meghri, Armenia is doing everything possible to remove Armenia from the Artsakh-Azerbaijan conflict while securing a Western-led platform for a dialogue between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. [Russia and the pro-Russian officials in Artsakh are against this.]

With that said, yesterday Artsakh's presidential adviser [and ex-MFA] Davit Babayan called for the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia. He wants to derail the entire diplomatic effort by keeping Armenia as a party to the conflict. The calls for "reunification" sounds sweet for the keyboard patriots and the Russian agents. In reality, it's a treacherous call that is meant to serve Russian interests. Davit Babayan wants Armenia to surrender Meghri so Russian peacekeepers can stay in Artsakh.

SARGSYAN: Davit Babayan is dead to me after his conduct during the 2020 war and his screeching interview about Shushi. At one point he even developed an attitude against France for wanting to recognize Artsakh as an independent state.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Officials from the EU, US, and PACE have recently criticized Azerbaijan. The resolution adopted by PACE matched Pashinyan's texts almost word by word.

SARGSYAN: Do you know who hosted PACE? Who was the speaker?

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Ukraine's Oleksiy Goncharenko. He even posted the results on his personal page. Let this be a lesson for anyone in Armenia who has been spreading Russian propaganda about the phosphorus bombs used by Azerbaijan being "sold by Ukraine", etc.

PACE heavily relied on the international World Court's ruling against Azerbaijan on the blockade of the Lachin corridor. This is why every diplomatic achievement is important. It builds up. Azerbaijan will not be able to "legalize" its Lachin blockade until it enters into negotiations with the Artsakh population. This is akin to the 1993 UNSC resolution against Armenian forces, but now Azerbaijan is on the receiving end.

Moreover, the US Congress organized a hearing to debate the situation in Artsakh. Not only there were calls to end the US military aid to Azerbaijan, but they went as far as to urge Israel to do the same.

SARGSYAN: There is a myth that the Israeli lobby in the US is actively working against Armenians. You personally know this isn't true. The Israeli lobby has always been balanced. Jewish Rep. and Sen. have a track record of pro-Armenian work. The roots of antisemitism in Armenia originate in Russia. Every historical tragedy apparently is the fault of Anglo-Saxons and Jews, according to Russia. Russia shares 50% of the blame for the Armenian Genocide, but they won't admit that. When I talk to Turks today, they tell me, "Can we just assume responsibility for our half?". There is a reason why Russia isn't allowing us to sit around a table for direct talks. Russia has extensive archives. If Russia fully declassifies the communication between Kemal Ataturk and the Red Square's rotten resident Lenin, our historians will be in for a shock.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Kansas National Guard chief and the governor of Kansas are in Armenia.

SARGSYAN: Yes. This is the second meeting in recent times. Today I can finally say that we are able to promote commanders with NATO standards in our military. I can't disclose everything, but I know these boys, I observe them.

Our MOD Papikyan also visited France. He was one of the main guests, he was traveling with French MOD and French army commanders. I don't know if it was a coincidence that the French press printed photos of weapons that we've long been suggesting that Armenia needs. The French navy can't climb the Armenian mountains, but Rafales can descend pretty well.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: But we can't have Western weapons while being a CSTO member [Russian circle].

SARGSYAN: Yes we can. Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan have military bases not belonging to Russia. We can sign an agreement with France to open a NATO base in Armenia. The US's effort in our region is aimed at containing Turkey's destructive role, and Iran. There is a geopolitical mantra that you need 3 points of leverage on the ground. For the US and West, those points could be Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia.

CHIBUKHCHYAN: Moreover, we're witnessing the formation of a new military trio: India-Greece-Cyprus. Armenia should join their military exercises.

Continue: https://youtu.be/vsgWDBhR_Tw

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Link to original report and comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/14hddhg/1_kocharyans_plan_to_exchange_meghri_former_pm/