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The de facto management of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is able to negotiate with Azerbaijan, however solely in a world format with the participation of mediators, a senior consultant in Stepanakert mentioned on November 18.
The official, Davit Babayan, was responding to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s assertion that Baku was prepared to speak to Armenians residing in Nagorno-Karabakh however thought of it an inside affair.
“What Aliyev suggests is nothing however an final give up for us by which a aboriginal group who’ve realized their ‘guilt’ will present repentance and beg Mom Azerbaijan to forgive them and permit them to stay within the Azerbaijani land,” Babayan, the ethnic Armenians’ de facto international minister within the area, advised RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in an interview.
He mentioned that as a substitute, Stepanakert suggests utilizing the format of the Minsk Group of the Group for Safety and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), though it has been largely inactive for the reason that 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijan struggle over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a battle over Nagorno-Karabakh for many years. Some 30,000 individuals have been killed in a struggle within the early Nineties that left ethnic Armenians accountable for the breakaway area and 7 adjoining districts of Azerbaijan correct.
The 2 sides fought one other struggle in 2020 that lasted six weeks and killed hundreds of individuals on either side earlier than a Russia-brokered cease-fire, leading to Armenians’ shedding management over components of the area and the adjoining districts.
“There will be some conferences, however not within the format of Azerbaijan-Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh],” Babayan mentioned. “It may be a format involving Azerbaijan, Artsakh, Armenia, Russia, america, France; it may very well be in varied compositions, at completely different locations, nevertheless it should be internationally acknowledged. And the one internationally acknowledged format [for talks on Nagorno-Karabakh] is the format of the OSCE Minsk Group.”
Because the 2020 intensification, Baku has publicly refused to speak to Armenia or another nation relating to the way forward for the area.
Beneath the phrases of a Russia-brokered cease-fire, Moscow presently deploys about 2,000 peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and alongside a five-kilometer-wide hall linking the area with Armenia.
Officers in Baku continuously assert that the Russian peacekeeping mission is deployed within the Karabakh area on a short lived foundation.
In his public statements, Aliyev has additionally repeatedly mentioned that the actions of the Minsk Group are now not vital since, as he places it, “the battle is now historical past.”
On November 17, Aliyev rejected the concept of negotiations with Ruben Vardanyan, a former Russian businessman of Armenian descent who not too long ago renounced his Russian citizenship, moved to Nagorno-Karabakh, and took on a management position in its authorities. The Azerbaijani chief described Vardanyan as an individual “despatched from Moscow with a transparent agenda.”
Yerevan-born Vardanyan, who presently holds the publish of de facto state minister, an equal of prime minister in Nagorno-Karabakh, responded with a name for “a extra constructive tone.” He mentioned he totally met the standards for a negotiator put ahead by the Azerbaijani president as somebody who “lives in Karabakh and needs to stay there.”
Vardanyan additionally mentioned talks between Stepanakert and Baku needs to be carried out by way of worldwide mediators, together with Russia, america, and France.
In the meantime, in a Twitter publish on November 18, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s ambassador-at-large, Edmon Marukian, contested Aliyev’s declare that the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh is an inside matter for Azerbaijan.
“No inside matter has ever been handled for many years by three everlasting members of the United Nations Safety Council, the OSCE and now additionally by the EU. The problem of human rights hasn’t been thought of an inside problem for seven many years, since World Struggle II,” Marukian wrote.
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