27/11/2014 19:34
G. Sahakyan: Baku’s provocation aimed at destabilizing regional situation
Speaker of the Armenian parliament Galust Sahakyan made a speech at the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Saint Petersburg, the press service of the parliament reported. G. Sahakyan said:
“During a training flight, a Mi-24 helicopter of Nagorno Karabakh was shot down by Azerbaijani armed forces on November 12, 2014. All the crew members died in the crash.
The helicopter fell near the Line of Contact set under the agreement of May 1994 on the ceasefire signed by Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia. For ten days the Azerbaijani side continued firing at the helicopter crash site, preventing attempts to recover the bodies of the crew. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the OSCE were also not allowed access to the crash site.
This provocation of Baku was definitely aimed at destabilizing the situation in the region. Such cynical actions are a challenge to the international community, and first of all, to the mediators in the Karabakh peace talks. Azerbaijani provocations in August 2014 on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the Line of Contact between Azerbaijan and Karabakh brought the region to a dangerous point, after which full-scale hostilities could have started. A full-scale war was avoided only thanks to the adequate deterrent actions of the Armenian side against the initiator of provocations, the personal involvement of Russian President, and mediatory activities of the OSCE Minsk Group.
A sense of impunity and the lack of targeted condemnation heighten the Azerbaijani ruling upper circles’ illusions about a military solution of the problem, which increases the danger of the regional situation’s destabilization”.