Talking to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh from position of force will not yield lasting solution, president says

YEREVAN, March 18. / ARKA /. Addressing an international media forum in the Armenian capital entitled 'At the Foot of Mount Ararat,’ dedicated to the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, President Serzh Sargsyan said it is clear that in today’s world the guarantee of stability and normal development is peaceful co-existence and tolerance. 

'This is the very principle guiding us through the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, thereby not allowing Azerbaijan to ruin peace negotiations with its bellicose statements and provocative actions. In contrast to Azerbaijani authorities, whose provocative actions endanger the stability of not only their state but also of the region, Armenia is fully aware of the grave consequences of such adventurism. Therefore, by containing Azerbaijan’s military provocations, we try to avoid a new spark of the conflict, which will seriously deteriorate the already unstable situation in our entire region,' he said.

'We do not incite hostility and hatred among our people, which has been an inseparable component of the policy carried out by the Azerbaijani authorities for years. In contrast to the Azerbaijani President who declared that the Armenian people are the number one enemies of Azerbaijanis, I would like to highlight once again that the Armenians do not have enemy nations.

It was Azerbaijan’s decades-long anti-Armenian policy and the determination to restore historical justice that ultimately drove the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to exercise their inviolable right to self-determination – to build their own homeland on their own land. Regardless of Azerbaijan’s threats and provocations, the wheel of history is impossible to roll back: the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is already a well-established reality and it is not feasible to break the freedom-loving spirit of its people. To ascertain it, I am calling upon you to visit Nagorno-Karabakh to get acquainted with the Artsakh state-building on the ground and represent the objective reality to your public. 

The Armenian position on the settlement of the conflict remains the same: it must be settled within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, through peaceful negotiations on the basis of the three famous principles of the Helsinki Final Act put forth by the Co-Chairs. Azerbaijan’s efforts to alter the format provided by the Minsk Group, talk to the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh from a position of force, provocations and blackmail will not yield a lasting solution. This is an unequivocal truth.

On January 27, 2015 the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group issued a statement in Krakow on Azerbaijan’s destructive policy, in which they called upon Azerbaijan to live up to its commitments to the peaceful resolution of the conflict. I strongly believe that continued sending of targeted messages calling to exercise restraint will incite certain degree of vigilance with their true addressee.'-0-