Mr FARMANYAN (Armenia) – Almost two months have passed since the last part-session of the Assembly and today we discuss what has been done during that period. Evidently, our values have been brutally and cynically attacked. First, in the very heart of Europe, there were bloody terror attacks in Brussels. Then, on the south-eastern shore of our continent – in Nagorno-Karabakh – Azerbaijan unleashed a large-scale military aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, violating international humanitarian law and committing war crimes.
The progress report refers to one of the controversial discussions we had here two months ago, in January. Let me recall that the voices against the controversial reports by Bob Walter and Milica Marković in this very Chamber were based on the tangible assumption that any attempt to approve groundless and one-sided resolutions – any one-sided and selective application to the principles of international law – will damage the peace process and serve as a smokescreen for the Azerbaijani autocratic leadership to resume large-scale military actions, undermining the peace process and threatening fragile stability in the entire region of South Caucasus.
While raising concerns, we had in mind the development of the events that, unfortunately, happened afterwards. Unfortunately, our concerns became a kind of bad prediction that cost hundreds of innocent lives from all sides of the conflict. While considering the progress report, we cannot jump over the efforts that the permanent bodies of the Assembly have taken – or, rather, mistaken – regarding this tragedy. A repeatedly clear message was delivered to Azerbaijani leadership since the very birth of escalation that there is no alternative to the peaceful settlement of the conflict and that war is not an option.
Presidents of France, the United States and Russia, heads of dozens of other countries and hundreds of foreign ministries, Secretaries-General of the UN, OSCE and the Council of Europe, high-level officials of the European Union and dozens of other international organizations joined their voices and reputations to deliver that unequivocal and uncompromised message to President Aliyev to stop military aggression.
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The increasingly strong and univocal message of the international community to Aliyev was a window of hope for peace to avoid further escalation of the situation. However, Mr President, I am sorry, but your irresponsible rhetoric came to contradict our Assembly to the international community, this time not only by ignorance of excessive human rights violations in Azerbaijan, but by exceptionally dangerous wording clearly siding yourself with Azerbaijan, which added extra fuel to the fire.