New war with Azerbaijan ‘very likely’: Armenia PM
Yerevan, Armenia (AFP):
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has warned of the risk of a new war with Azerbaijan, accusing Baku of “genocide” in the breakaway Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baku and Yerevan have fought two wars over the mountainous enclave and the signature of a peace treaty remains a distant prospect.
Talks under the mediation of the European Union, the United States, and Russia have brought about little progress.
“So long as a peace treaty has not been signed and such a treaty has not been ratified by the parliaments of the two countries, of course, a (new) war (with Azerbaijan) is very likely,” Pashinyan said.
Tensions escalated earlier in July when Azerbaijan temporarily shut the Lachin corridor, the sole road linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
“We’re talking not about a preparation of genocide, but an ongoing process of genocide,” Pashinyan said, referring to the Karabakh crisis.
Azerbaijan’s forces “have created a ghetto” in Karabakh, he said.
The growing diplomatic engagement of the European Union and United States in the Caucasus has irked traditional regional power broker Russia.
‘Red lines’
Armenia has relied on Russia for military and economic support since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Yerevan has accused Moscow, bogged down in its war against Ukraine, of failing to fulfil its peacekeeping role in Karabakh under a 2020 Moscow-brokered ceasefire.
As the latest round of peace talks on July 15 in Brussels failed to bring about a breakthrough, Pashinyan said that both the West and Russia needed to increase pressure on Baku to lift its blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“If, according to the logic of some circles in the West, Russia is not meeting all of our expectations because it is not fulfilling its obligations, similarly Russia also tells us (the same) about the West,” he said.
During Western-mediated talks in May, Yerevan agreed to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, but demanded international mechanisms for protecting the rights and security of the region’s ethnic-Armenian population.
Baku insists such guarantees must be provided at the national level, rejecting any international format.
The dialogue between Karabakh and Azerbaijan “should take place in the context of international mechanisms where we’ve got the witness, the international community will be the witness,” Pashinyan said.
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