OBVIOUS PROVOCATION AGAINST CO-CHAIRS
Vardan Grigoryan
Hayots Ashkhar Daily
18 Nov 08
Armenia
Early in the morning on November 16, the special detachment of
the Azerbaijani Defense Army penetrated into the rear of the NKR
Defense Army in the south-eastern part of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani
political-military contact line, violating the ceasefire regime for
the second time in the course of the current year.
It’s well-known to us that over the recent years, especially after
the signature of the Moscow Declaration, Azerbaijan has been doing
its best for making the Karabakh conflict an issue of interstate
importance and representing it as a territorial dispute between
Armenia and Azerbaijan.
After the adoption of the Moscow Declaration, which wasn’t signed by
the NKR representative, Azerbaijan’s political stance and propaganda
became more aggressive. Azerbaijan announced that it is now possible
to forget about Nagorno Karabakh’s participation in the further talks.
Therefore, when the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group paid their
regular visit to Stepanakert and remained there for a couple of
days, Azerbaijan had to find at least one reason for showing the
undesirability of the diplomats’ being in the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic. Organizing the special detachment’s penetration into the
rear of the NKR Defense Army, Baku tried to make it clear to the
Co-Chairs that after the adoption of the Moscow Declaration (which
was signed by the Armenian, Russian and Azeri Presidents), the issue
of NKR’s participation in the talks was exhausted, and the mediators
had nothing to do in Stepanakert.
Moreover, since Baku considers Nagorno Karabakh and the liberated
territories as an inseparable part of Azerbaijan, such presence will
hereafter be undesirable for the country.
While the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group were trying to assure us that
they had arrived in Stepanakert for meeting with the country’s top
figures and not just tasting the well-known mulberry vodka of Artsakh,
and that Karabakh’s participation in the talks was inevitable,
Azerbaijan tried to show that such prospect was undesirable for
the official Baku and, what’s even more, the mediators’ visit to
Stepanakert posed a serious threat to the lives of the Russian,
American and French Co-Chairs.
Preparing this provocation, the Azerbaijani party had previously
"safeguarded" itself against the relevant reaction of the international
community. It has invented its own "version" of the above-mentioned
incident, substantiating it with the story on the "feat" of the
hero individual. Several information Web sites of Baku have posted
a release saying that on the night of November 16, a certain Orhan
Shamilov allegedly fled from the military unit located in the southern
part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani military contact line (not far from
Fizuli). According to one of the versions, the serviceman was taken
a prisoner, and according to the other, he was killed by the Armenian
forces while trying to cross the frontline.
Naturally, Shamilov is now being searched, so it’s quite possible that
they may soon "find" the body of a special detachment serviceman who
was killed in the vicinity of the village of Ashaghi Seyidahmedli. Such
primitive "justification" is undoubtedly envisaged for propaganda
purposes because this is not a way of cheating the mediators and
especially, the Armenian party.
Such mode of action which has become common in international practice
usually leads to the three consequences diametrically opposing one
another.
The first is that the high-ranking mediators who have arrived in
the conflict zone, as well as the countries that have dispatched
them decisively condemn the incident, estimating it as an attempt of
using pressure against the international community and undermining
the international peacekeeping efforts.
The second option on which the Azerbaijani party relies is the
mediators’ attempt of initiating long drawn-out and fruitless processes
over the issue of "revealing the discrepancies between the versions"
proposed by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
And finally, the third option is to suspend the further operations of
Azerbaijan, the party which has resorted to military provocat ions,
by way of silencing its firing points.
We believe the Co-Chairs who are now visiting Yerevan are obliged to
express their clear-cut attitude towards the incident.
As to the two Armenian parties, they should not satisfy themselves
purely with admitting the coincidence of the Co-Chairs’ visit with the
provocation incited by Azerbaijan. Information in this connection has
already been published in a statement released by the NKR Foreign
Ministry on November the 17th. They are also obliged to clearly
announce that Azerbaijan’s recent attempt of ruling out Karabakh’s
participation in the talks by way of resorting to military provocations
and blackmailing the senior diplomats of the mediator countries comes
to prove that the international community also has its share of guilt
in this matter.
The member states of the OSCE Minsk Group still delay process of
making the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the third signatory to the
1994 ceasefire agreement, a full party to the talks. "Inspired" by
the mediators’ indifference towards its attempt of preventing the
implementation of this principle approved in the Budapest Summit,
Azerbaijan does not even have aversion to the idea blackmailing the
diplomats representing Russia, the United States and France.