During a conversation with www.aravot.am, political scientist Gagik Hambaryan, talking about the violations of ceasefire on the Armenian-Azerbaijani contact line almost every day, said that this border, according to the memorandum signed by Armenia and Russia, should be protected by Russia. “I want to distinguish between what happens on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and what happens on the Azerbaijani-Artsakh border. These are totally different and unfortunately, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense, making statements all the time, don’t distinguish this problem, because what happens on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is an aggressive Azerbaijani policy against Armenia and Azerbaijan must be hold accountable for that, accountable in the sense that Armenia, being a member of the CSTO, should demand from its allies to ensure the inviolability of its borders. Besides, at the end of August 2011, Armenia and Russia signed a treaty, which extended the term, for which the Russian bases had to allocated on the Armenian territory by another 49 years, they must protect not only the Armenian-Turkish and the Armenia Iranian borders, but also the inviolability of Armenian-Georgian and the Armenian-Azerbaijani borders,” Gagik Hambaryan reminds.
According to him, it remains unclear why the Armenian government doesn’t demand from Russia to fulfill its obligations. The political scientist claims that the fact that Russia is a member of the Minsk Group doesn’t matter here at all, fulfilling the obligations toward Armenia doesn’t jeopardize their position in the Minsk Group. “It has nothing to do with the Nagorno-Karabakh process, let us put this aside, this has to do with the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, because Azerbaijan, breaching the inviolability of borders wants to convince and show to the international community that in reality the conflict is not between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, but between Armenia and Azerbaijan and our foreign ministry should distinguish between those two all the time and show that there is no such problem between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan is a mere aggressor, organizing such subversive actions in the bordering regions of Armenia. The conflict is not between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, because Armenia couldn’t have a conflict with Azerbaijan because of Nagorno-Karabakh, because Nagorno-Karabakh is not a conquered or, as they like to say, occupied territory. In 1988, Armenians accounting for 75% of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast population couldn’t be self-occupied, they couldn’t conquer the territory, where they had been living for centuries, it is ridiculous,” Gagik Hambaryan says.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
