Interfax - Russia & CIS Military Newswire
 Tuesday 6:10 PM MSK


Yerevan sees Aliyev's statements before Armenia-Azerbaijan Karabakh
summit as provocative

YEREVAN. Oct 10

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan believes the Azerbaijani leadership
regularly resorts to provocative acts in the run-up to top-level
meetings to address the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian
presidential press secretary Vladimir Akopyan said.

"The president of Armenia believes that everyone perfectly knows that
the Azerbaijani leadership resorts to provocative acts before
top-level meetings. The latest statement was of the same kind, the
only distinction being that this act of provocation was committed in
the center of Baku rather than on the border with Armenia or the line
of contact with Artsakh [the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic],"
Akopyan said in an interview with the Armenian news agency News.am.

Several days before a meeting between the presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan initiated by the OSCE Minsk Group countries, Azerbaijan "is
trying to create the illusion that it acts from the dictating position
at the negotiations."

"Baku's calculus is very primitive - to avoid responsibility for
failing to implement agreements reached at previous summits, primarily
to the people of Azerbaijan," Akopyan said.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had said at an expanded government
meeting on Monday that the negotiating process would be resumed
without preconditions.

Aliyev also accused Armenia of torpedoing negotiations on settling the
conflict. He said Armenia had tried to disrupt the talks in any way it
could by inventing all kinds of pretexts and putting forward various
preconditions.

"Our and Baku's perceptions of disgrace are strikingly different," Akopyan said.

"Perhaps Azerbaijan doesn't know it, but abandoning agreements reached
earlier has been regarded as disgraceful in our region for ages. It's
a disgrace when something said in the international arena in the
presence of other foreign leaders and something said at home do not
match. It's a disgrace when you try to deceive the international
community and your own people," Akopyan said.

Armenia's agreement to hold negotiations does not mean that it has
changed its position on Nagorno-Karabakh or on the need to implement
the agreements reached in Vienna and St. Petersburg, he said.

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