SHIFTING THE BLAME

The hysteria raised by Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly has once again shown the whole world the true face of Armenian aggression. Sargsyan was simply unable to do anything else because he himself clearly represents Armenian terrorism. The only strange thing is that a man who makes no secret of his participation in the slaughter of the Azerbaijani population in Karabakh and in the brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations in his own country should speak from the rostrum of the UN about high morals, the peaceful coexistence of peoples and tolerance towards others.

Sargsyan accused Azerbaijan of reluctance to achieve mutual consent on a Karabakh settlement. The Armenian leader also accused Baku of anti-Armenian propaganda, negativity and destroying everything Armenian and spreading false accusations against Armenia.

Azerbaijan, in his view, "continues to reject the endless proposals of the international community aimed at an agreement on the non-use of force and adopting measures to strengthen trust".

Of course, one can understand the Armenian leader in all this. Was his speech at the UN General Assembly not an opportunity once again to try to delude the international community and at the same time please the Armenian lobby in the US, with whose representatives he was due to meet? Especially as the latter are not exactly keen on him and lay into him at every opportunity.

The main pretext for Sargsyan's anxiety was, most likely, Azerbaijan's intention to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Yerevan, which can do practically nothing to prevent Baku's growing prestige in the international arena, is only left with maligning Azerbaijan in the eyes of the world community.

However, on this occasion, too, Sargsyan's attempts have been in vain. In his speech to the General Assembly, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov quietly set out Baku's position on the question of a settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict. Stressing that a settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict should begin only with a withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories, the Azerbaijani foreign minister recalled that there were four corresponding UN Security Council resolutions.

The minister again emphasized that it was not Azerbaijan that was rejecting the proposals of the international community, but Armenia. "Azerbaijan is certain that a settlement to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict must start with the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories within an agreed timescale and must entail the restoration of communications, the return of refugees and internally displaced persons and the creation of conditions for the peaceful coexistence of Azerbaijanis and Armenians in the region of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict within the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," Mammadyarov said. According to him, the step-by-step approach proposed by the mediators with the support of the international community, with the exception, unfortunately, of the Armenian leadership, could bring lasting peace, stability and predictability to the region.

Thus, official Baku has once again expressed its support for the renewed version of the Madrid principles proposed by the mediators, whereas the Armenian leader did not even allude to these proposals.

Mammadyarov described as even more disturbing the fact that instead of preparing his people for peace and cooperation with neighbouring countries, the Armenian leadership continues to publicly incite future generations towards starting new wars by spreading dangerous ideas of enmity and hatred not only in relation to Azerbaijan, but to other peoples of the region as well. To substantiate this, let us recall that quite recently Sargsyan himself publicly entrusted Armenia's youth with a mission to seize a part of Turkish territory in the future, stressing that his generation had fulfilled its mission and "liberated" (read: "seized") Karabakh.

But Armenia's territorial claims on its neighbours are not confined to Azerbaijan and Turkey. In the last few days of September the well-known WikiLeaks website published a dispatch by the former US ambassador to Armenia, Marie Yovanovitch, in which she quotes Georgian ambassador Tabatadze as saying that his country might close its border with Armenia. "Tabatadze linked this with the fact that the Armenians are making too high demands in the talks on demarcation and want to change the border in order to obtain broader territories without offering anything in exchange," the dispatch says.

As far as the Armenian leader's claim about destroying everything Armenian in Azerbaijan is concerned, one need only point out that the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group's Field Assessment Mission contained quite the opposite assertion. Assessing the situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in October last year, the mission said, among other things, that the status quo of the occupation was unacceptable and called upon Armenia to put an end to this unlawful practice on these territories.

In the opinion of Aleksey Vlasov, director of Moscow University's Post-Soviet Research Centre, Armenia, which is under external and domestic pressure, is trying not to give a definite "yes" or "no" to the mediators' proposals, but to hold talks proceeding from the principle of "possibly", "presumably".

"The position of Azerbaijan, which insists on clearer wording and definitions, is more complex in the sense that it expects specific results from each meeting and each round of talks, but there have not been any," the political expert said in an interview with Day.Az. 

In other words, in Vlasov's opinion, Azerbaijan is on the offensive but Armenia is in a mobile defence situation. And it is always easier to defend on the diplomatic front than to advance. "Therefore, it seems to me that what we are seeing here are the consequences of a tactic chosen by the Armenian side. At the moment it is just being developed. Whether it will operate in the future depends a great deal on the mediators," the expert says.

Azerbaijan has become tired of Armenia's endless whims and the international mediators are well aware of this. It is not by chance that the demand to alter the status quo in the Karabakh conflict has become the focal point recently in statements by the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group.