Azerbaijan was Permitted to Resume War: NKR Minister of Foreign Affairs

“Azerbaijan got a permit to resume war. I think it was told to Azerbaijan—take as much land as you can, in any case, we won’t allow, that you were defeated,” Arman Melikyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, told at the discussion launched at the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS).

In his words, Azerbaijan attempted to take as much land as it was able to, however, it obtained as much as it was allowed: they acted in a way, that it wasn’t defeated, and took some lands under its control. “Although territorial achievements were not great, their political importance is rather big. Main implication of the four-day war is a political one, the first one being the fact, that the Armenian side has launched the process of withdrawal of territories, by that refusing to return what they lost.”

According to A.Melikyan after the Constitution of Artsakh was adopted the term security zone should have been removed, “We hear Mr. Serzh Sargsyan touching upon some unclear security zone, some lost square meters or hectares.

Don’t they want to perceive that this is no more a security zone? That it’s the constitutional territory of Artsakh, and Armenia, as a security guarantor of Artsakh, was obliged to raise that issue in Vienna as well.

I can understand the desire or intention of Mr. Sargsyan on not returning those positions through military means, however, when that intention is being enshrined on the political level as well. This already means that people simply opened the door of retreating lands, and today they don’t even pursue the goal of closing that door and this is our greatest issue.”

 By Ani Keshishyan