On June 20, RA Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan considers the forthcoming meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Saint Petersburg a “test for Azerbaijan”. The deputy foreign minister said this in the parliament during the press conference with the journalists. Shavarsh Kocharyan evaded the reporter’s question of whether he sees the need for this meeting in the case when none of the agreements reached in Vienna are implemented, moreover, they are not even in the process. The matter is about the installation of appropriate technical means in the contact line, which must report who attacked first. Recall that after the Vienna meeting, Aliyev said in Baku that he refuses this agreement, while the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, in recent days, have begun speaking that so far there are technical difficulties in this respect. Whereas, after the Vienna meeting, the Armenian side was announcing that the June meeting of the presidents will take place only in the case when the agreements reached in Vienna are put into force.
Shavarsh Kocharyan repeated that highly important agreements were reached in Vienna, “The progress is that the OSCE has presented the required appropriate documentation. The first one refers to the expansion of abilities of Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk’s team, which is essential for implementing an ongoing monitoring. The second refers to the mechanisms for investigating the incidents as there was a fair complaint until now, the Armenian side was repeatedly voicing these complaints that all the statements are unaddressed. It seems that it is obvious of who has done it like in the case of the April hostilities but they are not addressed,” – said Shavarsh Kocharyan.
Kocharian’s personal opinion is that judging by the actions of official Azerbaijan, the latter is not inclined towards the full installation of these mechanisms, “And June 20 will precisely show whether Azerbaijan will try reasoning this most important issue with thousand and one other issues in order to fail the agreements reached in Vienna.” Note the “godfather” of this meeting is Russia. The OSCE Minsk Group US co-chair James Warlick has already announced that he will also attend the meeting of the presidents. Regarding the attendance of the French side, Shavarsh Kocharyan had no information too. But he does not agree that Russia is trying again to take the leading position in the negotiations, “It is difficult to say that any of the co-chairs has regularly taken as you say the leading position in this whole process, in other words, was more initiating. Currently, this impression is no coincidence that Russia wants to take the leading position as you say, however, at least so far, such moves were agreed between all three parties.”
“We know our interests very well, Russia knows its interests too, and we should always clearly understand where is the verge where the interests overlap, on the other hand, it would be a gross mistake when the people who have bigger expectations from Russia than it was implemented to enter now into the other extreme and try to make Russia our enemy, it would be the biggest mistake,” said Shavarsh Kocharyan, in response to the question of whether the interest of Armenian and Russian overlap at this stage.
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Nelly GRIGORYAN
