Armenia Seeks To Send Humanitarian Aid To Gaza
RFE/RL Armenian Service
Armenia is trying to send humanitarian aid to Gaza ravaged by the latest conflict with Israel, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said during an official visit to Egypt on Tuesday.
Pashinian said that he discussed with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi practical modalities of organizing such an aid delivery through Egypt.
“We need the support and advice of our Egyptian partners regarding our delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and we thank President al-Sisi for his willingness to help in this matter,” he told a joint news briefing after their talks. “Our foreign ministers will deal with this issue.”
The ministers, Ararat Mirzoyan of Armenia and Sameh Shoukry of Egypt, met separately in Cairo. The Armenian Foreign Ministry made no mention of the issue in its readout of the meeting.
Gaza is facing a looming famine amid Israel’s military offensive that has reportedly killed more than 30,000 Palestinians. The offensive followed last October’s Hamas attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 others.
Armenia twice voted late last year for United Nations General Assembly resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Palestinians run along a street as humanitarian aid is airdropped in Gaza City on March 1, 2024.
“Armenia regrets tens of thousands of innocent victims of the escalation of hostilities in Gaza,” said Pashinian. “We ourselves have experienced the horror of attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and we join calls of the international community for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.”
He also reaffirmed Armenia’s long-running support for a “two-state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Both Pashinian and al-Sisi praised the current state of Armenian-Egyptian relations. The Egyptian leader said that during their talks they focused on ways of deepening bilateral commercial ties so that they “correspond to the level of political relations between the two countries.”
Al-Sisi, who visited Yerevan in January 2023, again paid tribute to his country’s small Armenian community.
“Thousands of Armenians have lived in Egypt and contributed to the development of Egyptian society in various spheres: the political, economic, cultural and artistic ones,” he told the press.
