Armenia cannot ignore Artsakh Armenians' security issues- parliament speaker

YEREVAN, June 26. /ARKA/. Armenia cannot ignore the issue of security of the Armenian population of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Armenian National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan said today.

"If Azerbaijan is ready to engage in self-deception, Armenia is not. Without an international mechanism to guarantee the security of Armenians of Artsakh, the issue will not be resolved," he told reporters on Monday.

Simonyan noted that he did not know whether this clause would be included in the peace agreement (to be signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan), because in that case an additional document on specific guarantees would be needed.

"We have the Nov. 9, 2020 statement (signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia to end the war in 2020 autumn in Nagorno-Karabakh)), which is not respected, and the guarantor country cannot or does not take action. Now I'm not sure that we should put this in a peace treaty rather than in some separate document in which one or more countries would act as guarantors. I want to say that if this issue is not discussed and if there is no solution, then it means that most of these negotiations have been meaningless talks," the speaker said.

At the same time, he pointed out that Azerbaijan's statements regarding the right of Armenians of Artsakh are detrimental to Azerbaijan itself.

"Such statements mean that the issue, which has been a source of problems for these decades, has not been solved (by Azerbaijan). This is a flight from reality, it is not beneficial for them that these issues are not discussed, and I am sure that they will realize it," Simonyan said.

Azerbaijani authorities reject a demand from Armenia to provide special security guarantees for some 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh. They say the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh would have the same rights as the rest of Azerbaijani population. -0-