Azerbaijan has always wished to see Turkey in Minsk Group, say Armenian officials

Azerbaijan’s proposal to involve Turkey in the OSCE Minsk Group is what the country has been dreaming about for long, a deputy foreign minister of Armenia has said, not considering the move absolutely surprising.

“It has always been Azerbaijan’s dream. The problem has absolutely nothing to do with Germany; the main target is Turkey, which is identical with Azerbaijan,” Shavarsh Kocharyan told Tert.am, commenting on a statement made by the OSCE chairperson-in-office.

In the course of his recent visit to Yerevan, Ivica Dačić (who is also a deputy prime minister of Serbia)  said that Azerbaijan had submitted to him a proposal calling for expanding the mission’s frameworks to Turkey and Germany. The European official admitted meantime that such a proposal wasn’t absolutely something new.

According to Artak Zakaryan, Head of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Foreign Relations (ruling Republican Party), not all the 11 member states of the OSCE are potentially able to handle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the same effectiveness as do the current co-chairing states (US, France and Russia).

Zakaryan said he knows that proposals the kind have been made repeatedly, both by the OSCE and different other countries which tried to offer support to the peace settlement efforts.

“It is already commendable, and the fact that the states and international organizations back the Minsk Group process, offering their international and political support is a sufficient guarantee for the problem to remain in the peaceful settlement phase for 20 years running. But there is an extremely important process that needs to be guaranteed by all the states and organizations which want to see the problem in a peaceful settlement phase. It requires putting an end to Azerbaijan’s destructive efforts and bringing the country to a platform that will make discussions over details possible,” he added.

Asked why then such a proposal was heard from the mouth of the OSCE’s top official, Zakaryan replied, “If we look back at the history of the conflict settlement process, we always had proposals in most different periods, but that doesn’t certainly imply a change in the conflict’s logic. And that logic cannot change in the current round either, as there is a clear understanding of a very important factor: the entire logic is based upon on the ideology of international norms and principles and has a detailed coverage, i.e. – the discussions held periodically in different formats – open and close – with respect to all the possible problems.”

The Republican lawmaker said he sees that the Minsk Group’s current format for now remains the most effective option promising a successful outcome in the talks. Zakaryan said he doesn’t think that the different proposals voiced periodically by Azerbaijan, Turkey or other states matter too much in the current negotiation process. “Armenia, as one of the parties to the conflict, has its clear-cut approach to the problem:  that is, the exercise of the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s right to self-determination. And Armenia is the guarantor of the Nagorno-Karabakh population’s security,” he said, adding that many solutions need to be sought in the second Armenian republic.

Zakaryan said he sees also positive implications stemming from the statement. “If there is a proposal, there is also a process in which different problems are being discussed,” he said, stressing the need of focusing more on the constructiveness of the proposal-maker.

“For that we need clear assurances that Azerbaijan has a will to lead the political process to a peaceful settlement, as well as a genuine desire to see real solutions through constructive processes,” he added.