Belarusian court endorsed with its verdict that Artsakh is a part of Azerbaijan. Said the Head of the “Modus Vivendi” Center, Ara Papian, in an interview with Aravot.am, addressing the move of Belarus to extradite blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan. Recall that Lapshin known for his traveling memories on the Internet had visited Karabakh twice years ago and has recognized it as an independent state, a few months ago he has slammed Ilham Aliyev, after which Baku has officially filed several criminal cases against the blogger and declare him international wanted.
“Belarus took on powers that were outside its liability: it is the liability of the OSCE Minsk Group. As long as one of the accusations was the fact that Lapshin had illegally crossed the border of Azerbaijan, in other words, by entering Artsakh he had crossed the Azerbaijani border. This is a very bad precedent affixed at this level. Foreign nationals whom their foreign ministries were urging not to go to Artsakh, now are facing a more serious dilemma: a criminal punishment. No one can guarantee that such an incident will not be repeated by other countries, such as Ukraine, Turkey, not excluded also Russia, if the relations do not proceed the way Russia wants, they are serious political consequences,” said Mr. Papian.
What should Armenia have done and didn’t do? According to Mr. Papian, “Lapshin is a citizen of Israel and Russia, these countries do not suffer from such decision and extradition. Yes, their citizen suffers and they will have some custodian problems but they do not suffer as a state, the only state that suffers is Armenia, including Artsakh. Armenia should have done certain moves, and we would see that these moves do not produce any results and then we would say that Armenia did whatever was possible to be done, yet no results. For instance, the time when Belarussian President was talking about extradition, our president should have said that such a move would be considered by Armenia as a non-friendly action by an ally country. Was it done, no?
Lapshin’s trial is underway for a long time in Minsk, and the stir exists two weeks, let them recall the ambassador for consultations and it would be a clear message to Belarus that it is not acceptable for us. There were lots of things to do. There are Armenian-Belarusian interests, we are holding an ambassador to go and say where we can hit the Belarusian interests and where we can help. The diplomacy is for such cases. Let them do it, if they are unable to do it and the resources are not enough, let them allow other do it. This is a game of chess, some defeat in the same situation while others win, it happens that they regularly defeat.”
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