Azerbaijan… to initiate another escalation. Arusyak Julhakyan
During the summer session of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe taking place in Strasbourg this week, Arusyak Julhakyan, an MP from Armenia stated in her speech that recent developments in the region indicate that Azerbaijan is going to initiate another escalation.
Below her speech from PACE website:
“While discussing the progress report of the Assembly, let me take the opportunity to tell you about the recent developments in the normalisation process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On 19 April this year, the commissions of Armenia and Azerbaijan working on the delimitation of the state boarder between the two countries, reached an important agreement.
The parties agreed that the border delimitation process will be based on the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991.
Based on this agreement, the parties agreed on the separate sections of the borderline in the northern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in order to bring them into compliance with the legally justified inter-republican border that existed within the Soviet Union at the moment of its dissolution. Since then, more than 12 kilometres of the borderline have been delimited and the border services of both the countries were deployed along the grid sections of the borderline.
This was indeed a positive and stabilising step towards the normalisation process. However, 10 days later, the foreign affairs ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in the symbolic city of Alma-Ata for peace agreement negotiations, but no substantial progress was achieved there, as Azerbaijan is reluctant to reflect the agreements already achieved in the Treaty.
Furthermore, Azerbaijan came up with new preconditions declaring that they will be ready to sign the peace treaty only after Armenia amends its constitution, as they argue that there are territorial claims in its provisions, which is not true. Armenia recognises the territorial integrity and inviolability of the borders of all its neighbours. Armenia is loyal to this principal and does not have any ambitions beyond its internationally recognised 29 743 square kilometres.
The Constitution of Armenia and the amendments to it are internal affairs of Armenia, and we consider the attempts by officials in Baku to intervene in the internal discussions in Armenia as a cross intervention into the internal affairs of the country.
Such rhetoric torpedoes the peace process and casts doubts on the sincerity of the leadership of Azerbaijan to achieve peace. In addition to the above mentioned, recently Azerbaijan started to periodically disseminate information that Armenia is violating the ceasefire regime. Azerbaijan does so every time it is going to initiate another escalation.
On 15 June, the prime minister of Armenia declared that it is the will of the government of the Republic of Armenia not to allow tension, and proposed to Azerbaijan to create a bilateral mechanism for investigation of cases of violations of the ceasefire regime.
No answer has been received from Azerbaijan yet.
Dear colleagues, Azerbaijan’s practice of predicting regional escalations at every opportunity is alarming and comes to prove the analysis made by a number of think tanks that Azerbaijan will do everything to disrupt the process of concluding a peace agreement with Armenia in order to launch a new aggression against Armenia after the COP29 to be held in Baku in November this year.
I draw your attention and the one of the international community to this as well as to the fact that Yerevan’s official proposal to conclude the peace agreement within one month remained without response by officials in Baku”.
