President’s Statement at Meeting with OSCE Ambassadors

In recent days many heads of states and international organizations expressed their concerns over the situation, and made statements calling to establish peace. They cannot be effective as long as they are not directed to a specific addressee, the one who provoked the offensive, and as long as they do not foresee consequences for disregarding them.

Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are in favor of cessation of hostilities to and the 1994 ceasefire regime to be fully respected with all the parties returning to their initial positions as of April 1, 2016. To preserve the ceasefire the OSCE needs to come up with stabilizing measures.

Second, I have repeatedly stated that to settle any conflict, especially when it is a conflict concerning the destiny of peoples fighting for their right to self-determination, it is necessary to address the cause of the conflict and only after that to proceed to other matters stemming from that cause.

The Armenian side has never declined reasonable concessions to resolve the conflict. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the ambassadors of those countries that are present here are well aware of this. But talking about them is meaningful only when the root cause of the conflict is solved and the Nagorno Karabagh Republic is freed from the threat of being re-colonized and annexed. No one can force a people to live within a state that does not reflect aspirations and values of that people.

And third, one of the recent manifestations of the cynical behavior of Azerbaijan was the statement of Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense, according to which Azerbaijan unilaterally suspends the “counter-offensive” against the “enemy” due to the humanitarian concerns and starts implementing the program of fortifying the protection of the “liberated” territories. I can assure you that Azerbaijan “hasn’t liberated” any territory. At this moment along the whole line of contact there is only a tiny segment in the south and another tiny segment in the north (which hopefully will no longer exist by the end of this meeting). This means that Azerbaijan has made an advance of merely 200-300 meters. For every meter they have lost more than one person. It is obvious that by this Azerbaijan is again misleading the international community and trying to create preconditions to guise both the hostilities it has unleashed and further continuation thereof.

I believe that every incident of violation of the ceasefire must be thoroughly examined and evaluated since that is the guarantee and motivation of effective negotiation process.

As an OSCE participating state Armenia finds necessary to call upon all the OSCE participating states to be principled in their positions. If there is a will and desire to fix the situation, effective measures have to be implemented to that end and respect of the 1994 ceasefire regime must be enforced upon Azerbaijan.

And finally, one of the OSCE participating states, Turkey, is acting from a position of inciting a great war in the region and is explicitly encouraging the adventurist policy of the Azerbaijani leadership. Azerbaijan is bragging about its alleged victory and Turkey congratulates it on that occasion, while the international community condemns the use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh although only in words. Turkey is the only country to provide unwavering support to the Azerbaijani adventurism. The statements made by Ankara before and after this situation- through which this country seems to compete with Azerbaijan with its anti-Armenian stance – can form a new hotbed of tension in the region, something of which Turkey has experience in the Near East.

To conclude with, I would like to once again thank you for being here and express my hope that my messages and concerns will be heard in your capitals.