By Trend
Armenia continues to take provocative actions against Azerbaijan, not abandoning attempts to hinder the negotiation process aimed at peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
As is known, once again such an attempt has been recently made by the Armenian side on the initiative of Armenian prime minister’s wife Anna Hakobyan within the “Women for Peace” campaign.
The Armenian side chose the occupied Azerbaijani territories as a platform for implementing the “mission of good and peace”. This time the Armenian side invited female public figures from Russia. Among them were founder of the VERA Hospice Charity Fund Anna Federmesser, writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, "Women's dialogue" party leader Yelena Semerikova.
Commenting on this fact, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stressed that attempts under the guise of a “humanitarian mission” to push a group of women from the Russian Federation to make a visit to the occupied Azerbaijani territories are not consistent with the mandate of Russia as a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group.
These attempts do not serve to the conflict settlement and do not correspond to the spirit of the conversation held in Dushanbe between the president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia. It was stressed that this issue would be raised by the Azerbaijani embassy in Moscow at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Trend, a well-known Russian security expert and TV presenter Yevgeny Mikhailov called Hakobyan’s initiative illogical.
Mikhailov stressed that Hakobyan stands for peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but at the same time invites a delegation of Russian women, including notorious writer Ulitskaya due to her opposition views, to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“The question is – why did the Armenian side invite the Russian delegation, rather than the Azerbaijani one? Mikhailov said.
“Armenia is in a conflict with Azerbaijan, not Russia,” he said. “The visit of Azerbaijani delegation to the Nagorno-Karabakh region would be more logical. I think that these actions of the Armenian side will not in any way speed up the settlement process.”
“Moreover, everyone knows Baku’s reaction to such visits to Azerbaijan’s territories,” Mikhailov said. “That is, it is clear that those Russian women who visited the Nagorno-Karabakh region at the invitation of Hakobyan will be added soon to the list of undesirable people in Azerbaijan. And this will be correct."
“If not stupidity, then Hakobyan’s actions are a provocation that does not bring the sides closer to peace,” he added.
“Most likely, women deliberately chose this provocation for one purpose – to support the actions of Armenia in Azerbaijani territories,” Mikhailov said, adding that such actions cannot be called peacemaking.
“Yerevan, apparently, has not fully realized that it is impossible to solve problems through war,” he added.
"Therefore, until now, all Yerevan’s actions, including the invitation of Russian women to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, are aimed at the development of the conflict and attempts to convince society of its one-sided rightness,” Mikhailov said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.