THE TRICKS OF INVADERS

Apparently, the settlement of the Karabakh conflict is thoroughly stuck in a deadlock state. There was a chance to settle it after the April skirmish on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. Armenia is categorically against the prospects of changing the status quo and rejects the withdrawal of its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, deliberately aggravating the situation in the conflict region.

The responsibility falls on Yerevan

According to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense, the Armenian military units regularly fire at the positions of our troops from rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and 60-millimeter mortars. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces shoot back to suppress the agression. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has warned that “the responsibility for a deliberate aggravation of the situation on the contact line falls completely on the Armenian military-political regime.”

Yerevan’s recent military provocations demonstrate, to a large extent, the attempts of the newly appointed Armenian Minister of Defense of Armenia, Vigen Sargsyan, to establish himself in the eyes of the local population. This “brave” bureaucrat has defiantly visited the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, where he has expressed quite “logically” that the Armenians needed to “prepare to not past but to future war.”

Vigen Sargsyan, as well as the President Serzh Sargsyan, are well aware of the fact that there will be no “past war”, while the “future war” is inevitable, given the reluctance of aggressors to stop the occupation. Azerbaijan has repeatedly warned the Armenian leadership that it would not tolerate the simulation of negotiations, and would liberate the occupied lands by any means. So, all the efforts of the Armenian military, focused on regaining control of strategic positions retaken by the Azerbaijani army during the April skirmish, are doomed to complete failure.

It is noteworthy that the escalation of situation on the contact line of troops, accompanied by such a political demarche of Yerevan as the visit of the Armenian Minister of Defense to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, coincided with the visit of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to the conflict region by the end of October. The mediators are trying to intensify the negotiation process on the basis of agreements reached at the summits held in Vienna and St. Petersburg. In recent years, Moscow, Washington, and Paris have repeatedly stated that the opportunities to sign a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia were significantly narrowing. In particular, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Russian presidential aide, Yuri Ushakov, have expressed that it was impossible to resolve the conflict in the near future. However, the co-chairs do not find themselves responsible in delaying the peace process, even though the peace could be reached long ago during almost 25 years since the establishment of the OSCE Minsk Group. It was enough to indicate clearly that Armenia was the occupant of the Azerbaijani territories and make Armenia implement international legal instruments that require the immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops from foreign lands. This was never done. Therefore, the intermediaries limit themselves to statements about the need to change rapidly the status quo in the conflict region. However, the Armenian aggressors, not willing to change the circumstances prevailing after the occupation, decisively reject this necessity.

During a recent visit of the OSCE Minisk Group’s co-chairs to Baku, the US representative, James Warlick, made a number of important statements, indicating that international mediators are aware of impossibility of maintaining the status quo, which has developed thanks to the Armenian occupation. He said that the peace agreement could not be achieved without the return of the occupied territories under the control of Azerbaijan. In addition, Mr. Warlick confirmed that the return of refugees and IDPs to their lands, as well as the deployment of international peacekeepers in the conflict region remain “the elements of negotiations”.

Mr. Warlick has also marked another very remarkable aspect: the co-chairs welcomed the proposal made by President Ilham Aliyev regarding the future status of Nagorno Karabakh. Indeed, official Baku has repeatedly stated about the readiness of the Azerbaijani state to provide the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh the highest degree of autonomy within our country. In a recent interview with the General Director of Russia Today, Dmitry Kiselev, President Aliyev reiterated that Azerbaijan was ready to grant Nagorno-Karabakh the status of an autonomous republic. However, given that one fifth of the international recognized Azerbaijani territories remain under the Armenian occupation, Azerbaijan will not agree to any other major concessions.

The willingness of President Aliyev to meet again with the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, to negotiate on the Karabakh settlement reaffirms a peaceable position of Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, Armenia continues to demonstrate an uncompromising stance, leaving no chance to the peaceful settlement of the conflict. In particular, the new Armenian government led by Karen Karapetian has included the principle of “not a single inch of land” in his program, which, in fact, means Yerevan's refusal to return the occupied territories to Azerbaijan voluntarily.

It is worth mentioning that the notorious voices of “hawks” from Yerevan are increasingly heard at a time when the negotiating process urges Armenia to agree on the withdrawal of troops from the occupied territories. An example is the statements of Arkady Ter-Tadevosian, a professional thug nicknamed “Commandos”, who became notorious in the early 1990s, killing unarmed Azerbaijani children, women and the elders. By revealing his sick dreams as a reality, he threatens to “blow up the whole of Azerbaijan in 20 minutes.”

But in April, when the Azerbaijani army debunked the Armenian myth of the vaunted “line of defense” in the occupied Karabakh, Tadevosian and his fellows were full of dread thanks to the power of Azerbaijan's military potential. A few months after the ousting of the Armenian occupants from a number of strategic positions, the Yerevan elite seems to engage in reckless saber rattling again. Most likely, they are inspired by another surge of “courage” due to the transfer of the Russian air defense missile systems, Iskander, to Armenia. However, the Azerbaijani Defense Minister, Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov, has provided strong arguments concerning the inadequacy of the hopes of Armenian occupiers: “This has not changed the military balance in the region in favor of the enemy. We have the full advantage in all directions. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces can respond to a few Armenian devices with thousands of missiles and weapons of war located in our arsenal. Our forces are able to destroy the military infrastructure of the enemy at any distance. The Armenian threats regarding the use of these missiles is nothing more than a fiction.”

In assessing the “courage” of the Armenian military, one cannot ignore Yerevan's continuous appeals to Moscow and the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). More or less sane people in Yerevan are aware that in case of resumption of full-scale war, Russia will not defend the Armenian aggressors based on any political and legal grounds. This is even more important in connection with the activities of the CSTO, whose members, with the exception of Armenia, maintain very close and friendly relations with Azerbaijan. The recent CSTO summit in Yerevan was notable since the Armenian politicians and experts attributed many expectations concerning the long-awaited support of Armenia's ambitions in Karabakh by the pro-Russian military bloc. However, the Armenian invaders did not get this support. Even on the proposed election of an Armenian representative as the Secretary General of the CSTO. This issue was deferred mainly because other members of the organization did not want to see a representative of the conflicting country as the head of the organization.

Meanwhile, Armenia's provocative policies were noteworthy in recent days as well. Yerevan raised the issue of changing the name of the so-called “Nagorno Karabakh Republic” to “Artsakh Republic”. Actually, the Armenian invaders have been changing the historical names of localities in the occupied Karabakh for years (not to mention the changes in location names on the territory of the Republic of Armenia, created on ancient Azerbaijani regions of Irevan, Zangezur, and Goycha). However, in this case, this frenzy about changing Karabakh to Artsakh (by the way, the word Artsakh is not related to the Armenians, but the Turkish vocabulary and the history of the ancient state of Albania) took place when Yerevan was urged to make concessions as a pledge to continue the peace process. Therefore, Baku regarded Armenia's initiative as an attempt to mislead the international community and to create additional obstacles in the negotiation process. According to the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, the demonstrative process of changing geographic names in the occupied territories of our country is yet another example of Armenia’s deviation from the spirit of issue and deceive the international community.

However, it is clear that all these tricks cannot to change the situation and affect the course of the conflict, the settlement of which is possible only on the basis of the termination of the Armenian occupation of Karabakh and the triumph of international law in the conflict region. Yet another Armenian provocation has been observed recently due to the activity of Armenian militarists on the front line. It is a desire of Yerevan to distract the attention of the majority of the Armenian population from the worsening economic situation in the country. The indicators of Armenian economy are so impressive that there is no doubt about the irreversibility of its collapse. The total public debt of Armenia by the end of this year will reach $5.9 billion. The Armenian Ministry of Finance was urged to confess that Armenia's foreign debt would rise from 43.7% to 54.4% of GDP by the end of 2016. Meanwhile, the demographic crisis in the country is also aggravating. According to the latest data, the number of permanent population of Armenia amounted to 2 million 993.9 on October 1, 2016, which is 4.7 thousand less than at the beginning of the year. The Armenian statistics remember with nostalgia that at the end of 1992, the national population was 3.6 million. In general, the Armenian population has decreased by 634.7 thousand people since 1991.

Thus, the demographic crisis is the most striking evidence of detrimental governmental policy imposed over Armenia's population. The government, which is pursuing a goal of gaining and retaining the power in the wake of Karabakh’s occupation. Whereas the Armenian community must understand that only by ending the aggression against Azerbaijan, Armenia will have a chance for prosperity and a decent future, and ensure stability and security in the whole region for the benefit of present and future generations.

Sargsyan’s clan vs. Avetian’s dreams

Azerbaijan has repeatedly expressed its readiness to establish comprehensive cooperation in the interests of all states and peoples of the region, namely the inclusion of Armenia in the Caucasus-Caspian integration, but only after the de-occupation of our lands. Azerbaijan also demonstrates genuine examples of tolerance and humanism, as was recently evidenced by human rights activists, Vahe Avetian and Vahan Martirosian, during their arrival to Baku to take part at the international conference “The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: the main obstacles and settlement prospects. Views from Armenia and Azerbaijan.” Both of them, due to their truly bold and objective position became outcasts in Armenia and are now forced to live abroad. Avetian does not hide that he wanted to visit to Baku for a long time and to bow before the monument to the victims of the Khojaly genocide. And he did so. “I wish that we, the two people, live peacefully side by side since we are bound by fate. We must stop the propagation of ethnic hatred ourselves, without intermediaries.” For Avetian, the resolution of the conflict means granting Nagorno-Karabakh a high degree of autonomy without violating the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

Vahan Martirosian believes that “as long as Armenia is ruled by the power, which is the culprit of the Khojaly genocide, there will be no reconciliation.” According to him, the Armenians hide the fact that there is an Armenian church under the state protection in Baku and there are Armenian shrines in the regions of Azerbaijan. Also, 38 thousand Armenians still live in the capital of Azerbaijan.

The escalation of tensions in the region, which is provoked by the ruling Armenian regime, as well as Yerevan’s rejection to voluntarily withdraw the Armenian troops from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan do not leave hopes for an early establishment of peace between the two conflicting countries. The prospects for peace in Karabakh continues to remain a hostage of Sargsyan’s criminal clan.