By Rashid Shirinov

The arms race at the Karabakh conflict zone will not necessarily lead to a war, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, James Appathurai, told news.am on June 14.

He said that political solutions decide everything eventually and brought the example of the Cold War between the U.S. and the then Soviet Union, noting that both sides accumulated many weapons, but they didn’t start a war.

"Therefore, even though the number of weapons may increase, there might not be a war," said Appathurai.

Appathurai added, however, that when military clashes continue together with the arms race and the parties to the conflict use a quite worrisome political rhetoric, the arms race certainly becomes a part of the problem.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.