President Serzh Sargsyan has presented his vision regarding the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
In an interview with ARMENIA TV, the president stressed that there must be calm in the line of contact. Causalities must be ruled out.
“This manhunt which exists today must be ruled out. It will create certain atmosphere and mutual trust. Where does mutual trust come from? Mutual trust comes when you begin implementing the agreements which you achieved recently. If you fail to implement the agreements once, the worm of distrust begins to gnaw. One after one and this is how an atmosphere of distrust appears. This must be eliminated, so that after this the negotiations continue in a calm atmosphere”, he said.
The president mentioned that at this moment negotiations over specific points of settlement are not proceeding, however he mentioned that this is natural – taking into account the developments of the past two years. “During the last two years we had meetings in Vienna, St. Petersburg, we’ve had agreements, and now one can say the process is proceeding in two directions. The first direction is that the tension must be eased, investigative mechanisms must be created, which will bring to a certain atmosphere of mutual trust, and after which it will be possible to go deeper over the provisions of the document. I’ve said this once, and I will repeat it again – it is impossible to negotiate with one hand and shoot with the other. Negotiations don’t like gunfire. And it is impossible to achieve agreement in this kind of conditions. Gunfire always disturb, human losses are always painful and bring a nervous atmosphere in the negotiations process. Each word, each provision must be weighed in a calm atmosphere, in order to be able to reach agreement”, the Armenian President said.
The president also mentioned that Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov did not present any conceptual or new proposal regarding the NK conflict settlement during his latest regional visit. According to the president, the Armenian-Russian relations agenda is so rich that solely the NK issue is not discussed during the visits of high level officials.
“In terms of Karabakh, I say again, Lavrov said everything at the press conference. The Russian FM is convinced that this conflict is possible to be settled within the OSCE Minsk Group and the proposed principles are the ones which enable to solve the conflict”, he said.