On February 19, the annual press conference of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh Masis Mayilian took place. Masis Mayilian briefed on the activities carried out by the Foreign Ministry during 2017.
Question: What are your expectations related to the negotiation process in 2018?
Answer: The April war in 2016 clearly demonstrated that at the current stage, the priority task in the settlement process of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Karabakh is to strengthen the ceasefire and to ensure the irreversibility of the peace process. In this regard, our expectations for 2018 are mainly related to the implementation of the already mentioned proposal on the expansion of the staff and the increased monitoring capabilities of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. The next step, in our opinion, should be a more substantive, result-oriented discussion of the mechanism for investigating violations of the cease-fire regime.
We are convinced that stability and security on the Line of Contact will have a multiplicative effect on the entire settlement process. In particular, they will allow avoiding human casualties, thus eliminating the main source of maintaining tension in the relations between the societies of the conflicting parties. This, in turn, will create a favorable environment for implementing measures to restore confidence between the parties. Combined, these steps will ensure a more constructive situation for the promotion of the negotiation process.
Surely, to expect such a dynamics in the negotiation process in 2018 would be too optimistic. At the same time, we consider it quite realistic to implement the agreement on expanding the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and increasing its monitoring capabilities, surely, with the political will of the Azerbaijani party.
