“For Azerbaijan no other lever has remained to have an influence on the situation but its so called opportunity to break the ceasefire. All that depends on great political risks and Azerbaijan does not succeed in doing it solely on its own. If Russia’s dual game is not interrupted by Western intermediaries within the Minsk Group, then such developments are not excluded”, replied the associated expert of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs, Ruben Mehrabyan to the question whether a danger is in place that after the spread of the document revealing the number of Azerbaijani victims in April War Azerbaijan will escalate the situation on the border.
Asked how the Armenian side can use that document, Mr. Mehrabyan answered: “Anyway, it is already circulated via media and will raise questions within the Azerbaijani society. This is another evidence of what has happened in reality, it comes to confirm all that was formulated after April War. This is additional evidence.”
Referring to the meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia and Azerbaijan within the framework of the UN General Assembly taking place in the mid-September in New York, Mr. Mehrabyan noted that that meeting is going to take place on the background of a few important and unprecedented factors: “The first one implies that Armenia’s stance in this negotiation process coincides with the stance of the international society to an unprecedented extent. This coincidence is in place both with the stance of Minsk Group Co-Chairs, and Iran. The coincidence constitutes that without the stabilization of the situation on the border it is impossible to solve issues and move the negotiation process forward. From this perspective Azerbaijan is alone.”
As stated by Mr. Mehrabyan, we go to the forthcoming negotiations on the background of the worsening of the US-West relations. The next factor is the unprecedented low level of Russia’s peace-prompting reputation: “Currently Russia as a state is associated with not peace and peace-keeping, but war, militancy and war inducement.”
Pursuant to Ruben Mehrabyan, the announcements of the American Co-Chair Richard Hoagland indicate that the US intends to return the process to Vienna agenda: it is connected with both the withdrawal of the snipers and the upgrade of monitoring mechanisms, responsibility, investigation mechanisms, etc: “What was its purpose was also announced: to reduce the possibilities of war operations in the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nevertheless, the danger of the evolvement of war operations still remains, but from the other angle, the conditions for Armenian diplomacy have essentially improved enabling Armenian side to put international pressure on Azerbaijan.”
To our view implying that actually the remaining part depends on the initiative of the Armenian diplomacy, Mr. Mehrabyan responded: “Yes, but not only, forasmuch as Armenia should implement it together with the subjects having similar interests as Armenia has. Anyway, Russia is not such subject. I indicate the US, France, European partners.”
As stated by Ruben Mehrabyan, a thing is certain: Armenia should not agree to the discussion of the issue on any Russian platform no way, and such attempts will be made for sure. An attempt will be made towards taking the settlement of the issue out of Minsk Group Co-Chairing format and shifting the stream at the expense of the Armenian interests of Russian-Azerbaijani transaction platform.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
