Karabakh Leader Denies Talks With Baku

Samvel Shahramanian, Nagorno-Karabakh’s exiled president, on Thursday, November 30, 2023, denied through a spokesman a political rival’s claims that he is negotiating with Azerbaijan’s government.

November 30, 2023 – Samvel Babayan, a former Karabakh army commander, said on Wednesday that Shahramanian is “calling Baku every day” to discuss the possible return of the Karabakh Armenians displaced as a result of the recent Azerbaijani military offensive. Babayan declined to elaborate on his claims.

An aide to Shahramanian, Vladimir Grigorian, insisted that the Karabakh leader may have only talked to Azerbaijani officials about “technical issues” such as the continuing detention in Baku of his three predecessors and several other current and former Karabakh officials.

“If they call from there or we try to get in touch from here, I don’t know whether we can consider that a contact,” said Grigorian. “We definitely can’t call it a negotiation.”

According to Davit Galstian, a senior Karabakh lawmaker, Shahramanian has managed to speak by phone with at least some of the Karabakh leaders who were arrested by Azerbaijani security forces during the mass exodus of Karabakh’s population.

“When I and other deputies were meeting with the president, we asked what news there is from our captured high-ranking officials. He said that … he spoke with them and they said they have not been tortured,” Galstian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He said he is not aware of other details of the phone calls.

Grigorian implicitly alluded to such calls. But he too did not elaborate.

Karabakh’s three former presidents — Arayik Harutiunian, Bako Sahakian, and Arkadi Ghukasian — as well as current parliament speaker Davit Ishkhanian were taken to Baku to face grave criminal charges in late September. Karabakh’s former premier Ruben Vardanyan, former Foreign Minister Davit Babayan, former army commander Levon Mnatsakanian, and his ex-deputy Davit Manukian were arrested while trying to enter Armenia through the Lachin corridor.

The Armenian government strongly condemned the arrests and urged the international community to help it secure the release of the Karabakh leaders. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, saying that they would go on trial for promoting separatism, organizing “terrorist acts” and participating in “aggression against Azerbaijan.”

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