Epress.am News from Armenia
On Nov. 11, RA Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Ambassador Ashot Hovakimyan, in response to a report by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and Personal Representative of the Chair-in-Office, made a speech, in which he said:
“As was noted during [Russian] President [Dmitry] Medvedev’s press conference following the Astrakhan trilateral meeting, the presidents assigned the foreign ministers to continue negotiations with the aim of reaching an agreement on the fundamental principals of settling the conflict.
“Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representative in the OSCE announced here in this hall that the fundamental principles have lost their significance and discussing them is a waste of time and energy. How can Azerbaijan’s ambassador call meaningless that which Azerbaijan’s president assigned his minister to discuss?”
As reported by the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs press and information department, Armenia’s ambassador emphasized that Azerbaijan, having such a position, is against the format of negotiations underway with the support of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs.
Concluding his speech, Hovakimyan said: “Another issue that I would like to raise concerns the efforts of strengthening confidence. Presenting means of strengthening confidence and security in the military sector is an inseparable part of numerous documents on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which, however, has been continuously denied by Azerbaijan. According to the agreements reached in Astrakhan, the first step in that direction should be followed by other measures to strengthen confidence. Azerbaijan, however, used the first step of strengthening confidence for narrow propaganda purposes, which strengthens not confidence, but distrust. Also heightening the atmosphere are bellicose statements and threats by Azerbaijan’s high-ranking leadership, the aim of which is to fail negotiations.”