PEACEKEEPING OPERATION IN NAGORNO KARABAKH PREMATURE – ARMENIAN MINISTER
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Business and Financial Newswire
April 19, 2006 Wednesday
Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian believes that it is premature
to consider a peacekeeping operation in Nagorno Karabakh and considers
Azerbaijan’s decision to increase the military budget as blackmail.
“Unfortunately there is no agreement between us and Azerbaijan
so far. That is why it is too early to speak about peacekeepers,”
Sarkisian said in an interview with Russia’s Krasnaya Zvezda daily,
published on Wednesday.
A peacekeeping operation requires the consent of all parties to the
conflict, he said. “This matter can only be discuss when the parties
come to an agreement,” he noted.
Speaking about the increase of Azerbaijan’s military budget and Baku’s
promises to bring it up to $1 dillion, the minister said that this
“looks like blackmail.”
“Billions of dollars will not help in this case. If large military
budgets had determined combat capabilities and combat readiness
of troops, all oil-exporting countries would have had the most
combat-ready armies long ago. But this is not the case,” Sarkisian
said.
According to him, “any unresolved conflict in the Caucasus may work
as a detonator.”
“The South Caucasus is a very small region, and all countries depend
on each other here. Thus, resumption of hostilities may have extremely
negative consequences,” he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
