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ARMENIA: WIKILEAKS CABLES CAUSE STIR IN YEREVAN
Gayane Abrahamyan
EurasiaNet
Nov 30 2010
NY
The Armenian government and the US embassy in Yerevan are staying
tight-lipped about WikiLeaks disclosures concerning US-Armenian
relations. But the country's fragmented opposition is trying to score
political points with the revelations about supposed arms sales to
Iran and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks.
Out of the hundreds of documents posted on WikiLeaks, two have grabbed
the most attention among Armenian citizens.
The first is a classified 2008 letter from former US Deputy Secretary
of State John Negroponte to President Serzh Sargsyan about Armenia's
alleged transfer of "machine guns and rockets" to Iran in 2003. At
the time, Sargsyan was Armenia's defense minister.
"Notwithstanding the close relationship between our countries, neither
the Administration nor the US Congress can overlook this case,"
Negroponte allegedly wrote. "By law, the transfer of these weapons
requires us to consider whether there is a basis for the imposition
of US sanctions. If sanctions are imposed, penalties could include
the cutoff of US assistance and certain export restrictions."
The letter notes that Sargsyan earlier had denied the arms sales
allegation, but Negroponte demands "compelling evidence" that the
alleged transfers will not resume; as a means to that end, he proposes
that Armenia "periodically accept unannounced visits by US experts to
assess the work" of Armenian teams watching for "dual-use commodities
and other contraband" at border checkpoints.
In response to the posting of the document on WikiLeaks, the US
Embassy in Yerevan on November 29 issued a statement stressing that
diplomatic cables "are often preliminary and incomplete expressions
of foreign policy, and they should not be seen as having standing on
their own or as representing US policy."
A spokesperson for Sargsyan, meanwhile, told local media outlets
that he would "refrain from commenting on another country's internal,
classified documents."
Some members of Armenia's opposition are not showing such restraint.
Two opposition forces, the Armenian National Congress and the Heritage
Party, have linked Negroponte's warning to the 2009 elimination of
the Millennium Challenge Corporation's $67 million road construction
program for Armenia. At the time, concerns about how well Armenia met
the program's democratization criteria were the reason cited for the
program's curtailment. Those concerns had been stoked by the deaths of
at least 10 people in clashes between police and opposition protestors
after the country's 2008 presidential elections.
"This ... shows that, in general, US aid programs are cut not because
Armenia didn't meet democratic standards, but when it [Armenia] doesn't
serve the interests of the US," charged Heritage Party parliamentary
faction secretary Stepan Safarian.
Giro Manoian, director of the International Secretariat of the
opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun), offered
a different perspective. "[T]he United States was trying to prevent
the threat of arms exports," he commented. "If they possessed more
serious grounds and evidence, we wouldn't have avoided sanctions."
Sanctions were never imposed against Armenia; one member of the Defense
Ministry's Public Council, a group intended to enhance public scrutiny
of ministry practices, contends that arms transfers to Iran are not
known to have occurred.
"There has never been a single case when arms and ammunition would be
exported from our country in disregard of the sanctions as provided
for by the UN Security Council's resolutions," claimed David Jamalian,
a military expert.
A cable related to Washington's dialogue with Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev that touches on the Armenian-Turkish protocols and
rapprochement process also attracted considerable public attention.
In a conversation with Aliyev on February 25, US Under Secretary of
State Robert Burns was reported as saying in an alleged cable from
the US Embassy in Baku that "progress on the Turkey-Armenia protocols
could create political space for Sargsyan to be more flexible on NK
[Nagorno Karabakh]."
The reported comment has outraged Armenian opposition members, who
have long insisted that Turkey, a key Azerbaijani ally, intended to
link the 2009 protocols with the Karabakh peace process, and that
such a connection was not in Armenia's interests.
The Armenian National Committee of America, an influential diaspora
group opposed to the reconciliation process, commented that "these
files are a smoking-gun" that show that Turkey has pressured "American
leaders against US recognition of the Armenian Genocide and in favor
of a pro-Azerbaijani settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
The Heritage Party's Safarian predicted undefined "domestic political
developments" in connection with the cable. "The least we can do is to
blame the Armenian authorities for conducting a short-sighted policy,"
he said.
Editor's note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.org
in Yerevan.
From: A. Papazian
Gayane Abrahamyan
EurasiaNet
Nov 30 2010
NY
The Armenian government and the US embassy in Yerevan are staying
tight-lipped about WikiLeaks disclosures concerning US-Armenian
relations. But the country's fragmented opposition is trying to score
political points with the revelations about supposed arms sales to
Iran and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks.
Out of the hundreds of documents posted on WikiLeaks, two have grabbed
the most attention among Armenian citizens.
The first is a classified 2008 letter from former US Deputy Secretary
of State John Negroponte to President Serzh Sargsyan about Armenia's
alleged transfer of "machine guns and rockets" to Iran in 2003. At
the time, Sargsyan was Armenia's defense minister.
"Notwithstanding the close relationship between our countries, neither
the Administration nor the US Congress can overlook this case,"
Negroponte allegedly wrote. "By law, the transfer of these weapons
requires us to consider whether there is a basis for the imposition
of US sanctions. If sanctions are imposed, penalties could include
the cutoff of US assistance and certain export restrictions."
The letter notes that Sargsyan earlier had denied the arms sales
allegation, but Negroponte demands "compelling evidence" that the
alleged transfers will not resume; as a means to that end, he proposes
that Armenia "periodically accept unannounced visits by US experts to
assess the work" of Armenian teams watching for "dual-use commodities
and other contraband" at border checkpoints.
In response to the posting of the document on WikiLeaks, the US
Embassy in Yerevan on November 29 issued a statement stressing that
diplomatic cables "are often preliminary and incomplete expressions
of foreign policy, and they should not be seen as having standing on
their own or as representing US policy."
A spokesperson for Sargsyan, meanwhile, told local media outlets
that he would "refrain from commenting on another country's internal,
classified documents."
Some members of Armenia's opposition are not showing such restraint.
Two opposition forces, the Armenian National Congress and the Heritage
Party, have linked Negroponte's warning to the 2009 elimination of
the Millennium Challenge Corporation's $67 million road construction
program for Armenia. At the time, concerns about how well Armenia met
the program's democratization criteria were the reason cited for the
program's curtailment. Those concerns had been stoked by the deaths of
at least 10 people in clashes between police and opposition protestors
after the country's 2008 presidential elections.
"This ... shows that, in general, US aid programs are cut not because
Armenia didn't meet democratic standards, but when it [Armenia] doesn't
serve the interests of the US," charged Heritage Party parliamentary
faction secretary Stepan Safarian.
Giro Manoian, director of the International Secretariat of the
opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun), offered
a different perspective. "[T]he United States was trying to prevent
the threat of arms exports," he commented. "If they possessed more
serious grounds and evidence, we wouldn't have avoided sanctions."
Sanctions were never imposed against Armenia; one member of the Defense
Ministry's Public Council, a group intended to enhance public scrutiny
of ministry practices, contends that arms transfers to Iran are not
known to have occurred.
"There has never been a single case when arms and ammunition would be
exported from our country in disregard of the sanctions as provided
for by the UN Security Council's resolutions," claimed David Jamalian,
a military expert.
A cable related to Washington's dialogue with Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev that touches on the Armenian-Turkish protocols and
rapprochement process also attracted considerable public attention.
In a conversation with Aliyev on February 25, US Under Secretary of
State Robert Burns was reported as saying in an alleged cable from
the US Embassy in Baku that "progress on the Turkey-Armenia protocols
could create political space for Sargsyan to be more flexible on NK
[Nagorno Karabakh]."
The reported comment has outraged Armenian opposition members, who
have long insisted that Turkey, a key Azerbaijani ally, intended to
link the 2009 protocols with the Karabakh peace process, and that
such a connection was not in Armenia's interests.
The Armenian National Committee of America, an influential diaspora
group opposed to the reconciliation process, commented that "these
files are a smoking-gun" that show that Turkey has pressured "American
leaders against US recognition of the Armenian Genocide and in favor
of a pro-Azerbaijani settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
The Heritage Party's Safarian predicted undefined "domestic political
developments" in connection with the cable. "The least we can do is to
blame the Armenian authorities for conducting a short-sighted policy,"
he said.
Editor's note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.org
in Yerevan.
From: A. Papazian