There cannot be any talk about negotiations without NKR’s participation, says head of ARF faction

Head of the National Assembly ARF faction Armen Rustamyan says in order to restart the negotiations over the settlement of the Nagono Karabakh conflict, Armenia must set two concrete preconditions for Azerbaijan which are the maintenance of the ceasefire regime and participation on the NKR in the negotiations. “If the agreements reached in Vienna will be implemented in the nearest future, in particular, when the investigative mechanisms of the incidents will be installed in the line of contact, guarantees will be created that Azerbaijan will maintain the ceasefire, the OSCE Representative’s group will expand, the violations will be recorded, only in that case we can speak about the new round”, he said this during the briefing.

At the same time, the head of the ARF faction stated that even during that time we cannot talk about negotiations since there cannot be any negotiations without the participation of the NKR. “We cannot consider the meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan negotiations. These are meetings for preparing the negotiations. We can talk about negotiations only when the Nagorno Karabakh will return to the negotiation table. Only that time the negotiation process will become complete”, MP stated.

Armen Rustamyan added that Azerbaijan’s blitzkrieg was subjected to fiasco during the four-day war. “They present their failure as a victory, but even if it is a victory, it is a Pyrrhic victory, since the lost was much more than they expected. They were trying with that blitzkrieg to solve several issues, to create a new line of contact, however, they failed”, MP stated.

Referring to the talks over concession issues MP said there is no need to talk about the concessions since Azerbaijan never talked about it.

He also referred to the talks about the lost territories of the Armenian side during the four-day war and the calls of taking those territories back. MP said as long as the state of war continues, there can be constant changes in the line of contact. “Why do we use the expression of line of contact since there do not exist clear borders, and as long as the state of war continues, this line of contact can be changed. The line of contact has always been changed during these years and it will change since there is no basis to think that the war ended. We have also taken several territories under our control without announcing that. These have not been publicized, and there is no need to publicize these, however, I say the truth”, head of the ARF faction stated.