Aram Karapetyan about the situation and Serzh Sargsyan’s speech
“In this situation, there are quite interesting three questions that were also used in Serzh Sargsyan’s speech. Serzh Sargsyan talks to Biden and Kerry, raises the issue before American top officials to bridal Azerbaijan. Then, Aliyev meets with them and a few hours later, large-scale military operations began along the border. Why?” said the leader of the “New Times” party, Aram Karapetyan, in an interview with Aravot.am, referring to the military operations launched along the Karabakh-Azerbaijani border since last night, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s speech at the Security Council session.
The next question for our interlocutor is the agreement on mutual military cooperation between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, which was reflected in President Serzh Sargsyan’s speech. “I suppose it is necessary for the Foreign Ministry to cooperate with the Foreign Ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh and work in the direction of signing a treaty of military cooperation with Nagorno-Karabakh. It is necessary to have the text of the treaty for discussions and then submit to the National Assembly for ratification,” said Serzh Sargsyan.
“This agreement as far as I know should already be ready. It was spoken that they are already working on it. I believe this is one of the steps in the recognition of the NKR if escalation of the conflict continues,” said Aram Karapetyan, adding that in this case, as a mutual cooperation, the RA armed forces will also be used, “Armenia is not involved in this conflict as a state but it may be involved as it is for the 1994 ceasefire agreement. In that case, we are obligated to have an agreement.” The third question, according to Aram Karapetyan, is that Russia reacts the situation more actively, “As to what it is aimed at, we can try to make assumptions. But, by and large, it is also unclear because, on the one hand, Russia was selling weapons to Azerbaijan for about four billion dollars, saying that it is a business, now it is demonstrating an activeness.”
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To the observation that the CSTO statement was especially remarkable, which is for the first time and the only structure voicing clear accusation against Azerbaijan, Aram Karapetyan replied, “Yes, but on the other side, the stance before it was unclear. If you were to accuse and tell Azerbaijan that its posture is wrong, you begin to take aggressive actions. It is a fact that only Russia out of the OSCE Co-Chair countries is active. There is nothing heard from the rest, neither anything real from the United States nor from France.” In this situation, our interlocutor thinks that it is very difficult to stop Azerbaijan and shares his impressions, “Russia is weakening and its policy also becomes unclear, once it enters Syria and then comes out and then re-enters. Turkey is slowly-slowly switching the logic of its anti-Russian steps to anti-Armenian. The geopolitical situation gradually becomes unstable and it is clear that Azerbaijan is trying to fish in troubled waters.”
Aram Karapetyan opines that it will be possible to cease the escalation of the conflict in the coming days, after which a new situation will begin, “It is possible to put the issue of peacekeepers’ access by all of the parties, the issue of the so-called” occupied territories.” This escalation turned to be so intense that the political situation pertaining to the negotiations will be changed. I think we will need sufficiently serious and asymmetrical steps to stop Azerbaijan”. According to our interlocutor, both Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s complex economic situations will have a great importance in all of this.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
