BEIRUT, LEBANON (9:10 A.M.) – Armenia has no intention of attacking oil and gas infrastructure on Azerbaijani soil, despite the ongoing clashes on the border, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the Armenian Defence Ministry’s spokesman, said on Sunday.
According to Hovhannisyan, claims that the Armenian armed forces are plotting to disrupt the international energy infrastructure passing through Azerbaijan are a “false thesis put forward by Baku”.
“Technically, the Armenian armed forces could have done this a long time ago, but we have not had and do not have such plans. We believe that the oil and gas communications passing through this region belong to international companies, and these companies should be confident that Armenia is a guarantor, not a consumer of security. Armenia can better ensure their security than anyone else in the region”, Hovhannisyan told reporters.
The armed confrontation escalated on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on 12 July, notably far from from the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the two have waged war for decades. The clashes took place near the Movses village along the contact line between Armenia’s Tavush province and Azerbaijan’s Tovuz province. Yerevan and Baku blamed the initiation of the firing on each other.
Azerbaijan has so far reported 12 troops killed as a result of armed hostilities, while Armenia has reported four fatalities. According to Yerevan, another 10 servicemen and one civilian have sustained injuries.