15:04, 1 June 2023

YEREVAN, JUNE 1, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan has said that direct dialogue between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan would also be highly important for Azerbaijan because if the dialogue fails to take place the problem won’t be resolved.

Asked whether the formation of an international mechanism for dialogue between Stepanakert and Baku is a principled matter for Armenia, given the fact that Azerbaijan doesn’t agree to it, Simonyan said: “We must reach a point where Azerbaijan starts to speak about it because otherwise there won’t be a beneficial situation for Azerbaijan itself, there will be a big gap which it won’t be able to fill for years, decades. If Azerbaijan doesn’t sit down and speak with the Armenian population living in Artsakh, that wound will someday [open].”

He added that international pressure and the international factor have big role. The Speaker said Armenia has success in this direction.

The problem won’t be resolved without dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert, Speaker Simonyan said.

“The other option is genocide, which we won’t allow. The Azerbaijani authorities should think that this issue is far more important for them than for us,” he concluded.

Speaking about a possible peace treaty, Simonyan called for guarantees to be in place for implementation of the terms of the agreement. As an example he mentioned the 9 November 2020 trilateral statement, which Azerbaijan is regularly violating while Russia – who is supposed to guarantee its implementation – fails to give proper response.