“The last two incidents- the one near Shushi and the other where a tractor driver was killed in the presence of Russian peacekeepers- are very worrying,” Stepan Safaryan, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, expressed his opinion during the presentation-discussion of the report titled the Road to the 44-Day War organized by the Armenian Institute for International Security (IAEA) on November 9. He mentioned that these incidents show that the Russian peacekeepers are not able to carry out peaceful coexistence, but at the same time he said, “Without denying the fact I mentioned, I see a reason for that fact – the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers is not defined internationally, and there are no international guidelines for that mission. In this case, the Russian peacekeepers do not have a mandate. There is no such thing as a standard guideline.”
Stepan Safaryan also stressed that yesterday’s incident, when a civilian working on water pipes was killed by Azeris, took place when Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was in Shushi together with the Minister of Defense.
“Maybe the goal is to prove that the Russian peacekeepers are not able to ensure that peace? All these facts that we connect, yes, the first impression is that if you can not ensure peace, leave. But it can not be so. Maybe the game is to say it outright. Definitely, I think the solution to this problem is the clarification of the mandate, standards, and mission. If it is to be done in the Minsk Group, in all cases all these issues must be written on one piece of paper.” According to Stepan Safaryan, the fact that we regularly hear statements from the Azerbaijani side that the Russian peacekeepers are temporary and that the peacekeepers show that they are not a guarantor of security means that we have a lot to think about.
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
