Tatul Hakobyan considers anachronism the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), Stefan Visconti (France) and Richard Hoagland (US) in connection with the incident happened near the village of Chinari on December 29. To the question of Aravot.am whether the statement is again without an addressee, furthermore, the criticism is directed to Armenia as the statement spells out that “Armenia’s armed forces continue to keep the body of the Azerbaijani soldier killed in the battles with them,” in response, Mr. Hakobyan, first of all, urged to understand what is meant by the OSCE Minsk group and mediators, “When we understand that the mediators are just mediators, and all their statements should try to keep balanced, at that time, we understand that it was not possible to expect much more from them.”
Not agreeing with the co-chairs’ statement, Tatul Hakobyan noted, “I think that it is not only without an addressee but there is also a message addressed to Armenia as to why you are not giving the body of this Azerbaijani deceased. On the other hand, I am trying to understand that the Minsk Group is just a mediation mission implementing organization whose any statement which one of the parties can perceive as unbalanced will already create a problem for the Minsk Group activities. Especially given the fact that Azerbaijan is continuously threatening and blackmailing, publicly saying that the Minsk Group format is not the format where the Karabakh conflict can be resolved.”
Tatul Hakobyan
Consequently, Mr. Hakobyan stated that Azerbaijan’s blackmail and threats that it can try to move the settlement of the conflict to other formats produces its effects. And the Minsk Group co-chairs are trying somewhere to meet the interests of Azerbaijan with their statement. For Tatul Hakobyan, the weirdest thing is that the co-chairs address the incident more than ten days after the tragic incident which is unserious, “This was the kind of incident which was to be responded on the same day as with the statement of the co-chairs so as with OSCE MG acting chair at a higher level. Indeed, the balance in this statement is slightly inclined towards Azerbaijan, and they have composed such a text that leaves an impression that the killed Azeri was an innocent man but in reality, we know what the result was caused by. It would be good for the Minsk Group co-chairs to have tried to urge the parties to really conduct an investigation or they would try to keep the topic fresh to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents. In some sense, this statement also indirectly paves a way for the Azerbaijani provocations in the future.”
Mr. Hakobyan stated that there are a number of questions: whether the Armenian side does not want to hand over the body, what conditions are set forth and so on. And in this context, the dissemination of such a statement does not add anything to the fragile peace that is now maintained on the RA-Azerbaijan border and NKR-Azerbaijan contact line.
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
