ArmInfo. The unprovoked murder of the Armenian serviceman on duty on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is evidence that it is murders that remain the "trump card" or, in other words, political creed of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Ruben Mehrabyan, an expert at the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA), said in an interview with ArmInfo.
On May 28, in Armenia's Syunik, Armenian serviceman David Vardanyan was mortally wounded by an Azerbaijani sniper.
"The war is over. Various aspects have been selected, with a peace process underway. But we see Aliyev goes on sponsoring fire and murders. And he will spare no effort to continue firing and murdering. Otherwise, he will lose his hobby, namely, jingoism based on hatred for all that is Armenian – a ground regularly 'fertilized' with cross-border murders. The Aliyev regime will lose its comfort zone, the very purport of its existence. The concept of the enemy, namely, the Armenians that must be murdered, remains the fundament of the Aliyev dynastic regime," Mr Mehrabyan said.
With normal developments, the "Brussels-3 results" should have served a basis for the Armenian- Azerbaijani relations to take a more or less predictable course. But that never happened for the simple reason that even if the negotiations inch ahead, it means for Aliyev to lose his comfort zone inch by inch.
"All this makes it crucially important to hold Aliyev responsible for being violently inclined to murders. Armenia must expose the links between the murders of Armenian servicemen and their political cost, making the exposures available to the public inside Armenia first of all. That among other things would be a step toward diversifying Armenia's foreign policy. It is not going to be an easy task. Rather, it is going to be a hard and subtle game. But the most important thing is that Armenia has the trump cards it has to play in the right way now," Mr Mehrabyan said.