“Azerbaijan thus sees a certain freedom of action along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. We can assume that we are talking about the eastern border, but who can guarantee that they are not going to do the same in the direction of Nakhichevan,” RA Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Artsakh Arman Melikyan told Aravot.am, referring to the Putin-Aliyev-Pashinyan trilateral meeting in Sochi and the statements made there.
During the bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the recent shootings and killings in Artsakh were the result of controversial issues on the ground. And the military clashes on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan are not within the scope of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping mission. At the same time, Arman Melikyan draws attention to the fact that both Russia and Azerbaijan completely ignore the fact that Russia has an obligation to protect the territorial integrity of Armenia.
“Moreover, this obligation does not provide for any privileged position for Azerbaijan. But we see that various old and new officials from the CSTO or Russia say that this intervention is impossible for Russia, especially in the case of Azerbaijan, because Azerbaijan is also a strategic partner of Russia, although they do not have a corresponding agreement.” By the way, a similar observation was made by Nikol Pashinyan the other day. According to Arman Melikyan, in this respect the situation is quite slippery and the Armenian authorities seem to be trying to maneuver diplomatically in that slippery situation. Only time will tell how successful they will be.
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“Judging by the information available now, we can say that the Russian side is in fact in favor of opening the channels of communication,” he said, referring to the observation of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the trilateral meeting to accept the unblocking of transport communications in Karabakh. It is noteworthy that in his speech the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan did not speak about the status of Artsakh or the obligatory implementation of the right to self-determination. He spoke quite generally and vaguely about the solution of the problem within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.
Arman Melikyan considers the mention of the OSCE Minsk Group a reasonable approach before the Aliyev-Pashinyan meeting to be held in Brussels on December 15. “In any case, we must understand that the Armenian authorities have no place to move today and there are preconditions for external blackmail. In order to get out of this situation, very concrete actions are needed, which in fact can not be initiated even by the state. It is a very delicate situation, there is a need for professional work, which has other obstacles to initiate, and I do not know how possible it will be to overcome.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
