Armenian general on OSCE MG co-chairs’ parity

The diplomatic language is a different language, and Armenians should realize it is the language spoken by the OSCE Minsk Group, Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Major-General Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan told Tert.am.

“They speak their own language and take their own steps, which, however, hardly have anything in common with actuality,” Tadevosyan said as he spoke of different expert and political circles’ response to ceasefire violations on the Line of Contact between the Azerbaijani and Nagorno-Karabakh troops.

A media outlet voiced the opinion on Tuesday that the OSCE Minsk Group’s “over-diplomatic” statement plays into the hands of Azerbaijan. The matter concerns the murder of three Armenian servicemen in Tavush. In this connection, David Tonoyan, a high-ranking official of Armenia’s Ministry of Defense, did not even rule out an act of sabotage.

In their statement the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassadors Robert Bradtke of the United States, Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, and Jacques Faure of France) stressed they were “deeply concerned by recent reports of a series of ceasefire violations along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the Line of Contact that resulted in a number of deaths and casualties.”

The Co-Chairs strongly condemned any loss of life, and reiterated that there was “no alternative to a peacefully negotiated settlement of the conflict. The Co-Chairs urge[d] all sides to respect the 1994 ceasefire and to abstain from retaliatory measures that would lead to further escalation."

This is not the first instance of the mediators keeping parity between the conflicting parties, namely, aggressor Azerbaijan and victim Armenia, said Ter-Tadevosyan. “This is Azerbaijan’s normal style. They fire a hundred times, we fire only one time. But the co-chairs are trying to keep parity between the parties: both parties must ‘put an end to this practice’.”

Moreover, there is no sense in the Armenian leaders raising the issue at the international observers’ level to prevent them from maintaining parity in future. “Our leaders can hardly get the co-chairs to release statements reflecting the real situation,” Ter-Tadevosyan said.