YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 19, ARMENPRESS. “Armenpress” presents to the readers the article by Artashes Geghamyan – parliamentarian of the RA National Assembly from the Republican Party, the head of RA NA delegation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Chairman of the “National Unity” party.

We, I am saying this sincerely, do not wish any sufferings to Azerbaijan, and we will never allow anyone to crave sufferings to our nation.

Quote from the President of RA at the XI session

of the Union of Volunteers “Yerkrapah” 

 February 18, 2017

So, on February 23, 2017 in Vienna the sixteenth winter session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (hereinafter OSCE PA) will launch. It is hard to overestimate the value of the upcoming meeting of the OSCE PA, as the processes taking place in the world are too complex and varied that makes the perspective for the development of the humanity quite unpredictable. Before the presidential elections in the US, on November 8, 2016, the leading researchers in the field of geopolitics of the situation in the world in the XXI century, were almost unanimous in their assessments, namely that the global trans-national corporations (hereinafter GTNC) were trying to subdue nations, states impose their perception  of the world order , the meaning of life, the development goals. Moreover, many analysts believed that the strategy of action brings to a clash of civilizations, military power and information-psychological suppression of the dissenters, the capacity building of absolute military superiority, financial and criminal control over the ruling elite in all countries of the world. It was also noted that the controlled GTNC mass media of the world act as a tool of misinformation and lead the world public opinion to the false goals. Under these circumstances, as a bolt from the blue, on January 20, 2017, the inauguration speech of the 45^th US President Donald Trump was on air. What was so revolutionary, subversive to the GTNC and to the world liberal elite that the US President said. Here are some quotes from his inauguration speech: “Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.  Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

...  What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.”

I specifically focused on certain extracts from the inauguration speech by the US President, as it marks the beginning of qualitative changes in the current geopolitical situation. Before January 20 of this year, the global confrontation was developing among the three major centers of power in the world politics: the Western civilization (the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc.), the civilizations of the East, that is gaining power - (Russia, China, India, Vietnam, etc.), the global transnational community that is a very powerful and very aggressive subject of global processes. After the inauguration speech by Donald Trump, the international relations enter a qualitatively new, very sophisticated, somewhat unpredictable period. In order to characterize the full complexity of the modern international relations, we should note that a survey was conducted in nine Western countries including the US, Germany and the UK, which showed that the majority of people in these countries believe that World War III could begin in the near future. According to The Independent, referring to the data by company You Gov, among the respondents 64% of Americans believe that World War III cannot be avoided, 15% - believe in peace settlement. In the UK, 61% of the respondents predict World War III, 19% stick to a diametrically opposite view. According to the survey by the sociologists, mostly the residents of the United States and France are concerned with the perspective of a possible third world war. The survey also showed that 71% of the British respondents and 59% of American respondents are apprehensive about Russia.

In this context we should note that based on the survey data by “Levada – Center” (Russia) published on October 31, 2016, 48% of Russians are apprehensive about the fact that worsening of Russia’s relations with the West over Syria could escalate into a third world war, and according to Gallup (United States) the number of Russians who consider NATO a threat reached 67% in 2016. Under this far from simple international condition, the work of the OSCE PA will be launched on February 23.

It seems that the issues of coordinating efforts by 57 OSCE member states to mitigate international tension, ensuring security in the OSCE area should objectively take a leading position in the reports and speeches of the delegates from different OSCE member-states. At the same time it is extremely important to analyze thoroughly the situation which is developing in the international relations when the armed conflict between the parties is temporarily suspended without signing a peace treaty, and even more so, when the political agreements on the resolution of a conflict are crudely violated by one of the parties to the agreement. This question is crucial, because the “frozen conflicts” (hereinafter FC) contain a strong destabilizing charge; moreover, inconsistent in their resolution, ignoring of the FC by the global community, may be the impetus for transition of such conflicts into a “hot” phase with the threat to escalation of a local war to a world war.

Such a course of events, if not restrained, can be noticed in the example of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. So, after the April (2016) war between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the US Secretary of State John Kerry, performing the order issued by President Barack Obama, held a meeting in Vienna on May 16, in the 3+2 format (the foreign ministers of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group plus Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan). The joint statement adopted at that meeting said that an agreement was reached to take steps to introduce a monitoring mechanism on the contact line between the conflicting parties with the view of investigating the incidents and increasing the capabilities of the team of the Personal Representative of OSCE Chair (international observers) with further transition to a resumption of negotiations on peaceful settlement of the conflict. Then, on June 20, 2016 in St. Petersburg at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was held, at which they confirmed the agreements reached at the last Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Vienna on May 16 of last year aimed at stabilizing the situation in the conflict zone and at the creation of an atmosphere contributing to the advancing of the peace process.

It all looked good: good grounds are established to reach mutual understanding on a number of issues the settlement of which will create favorable conditions to gain substantial progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, in practice it turned out exactly the opposite. Here are just some of the statements by the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made in 2017. On January 10, 2017, speaking at the enlarged meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan, he made a number of dangerous statements, in particular: “Azerbaijan will continue to build up its military capabilities, including delivery of the most modern weapons into the country ... We have the most modern weapon, which has high accuracy and destructive power. Some of them have been shown, the other part was not. They will be demonstrated at the right time and in the right place ... We are ready to resolve the issue (Nagorno Karabakh - AG) by military means at any time.”

The Azerbaijani President makes such statements six months after the adoption of the twenty-fifth annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Tbilisi Declaration, Paragraph 35 of which reads: “Underlines respect for the principles of the inviolability of frontiers and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes, equal rights, and self-determination of peoples as stated in the Helsinki Final Act, and calls on the Russian Federation to restrain its aggressive practices and reverse the illegal annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.” Thus, an enviable persistence of the Apsheron Sultan on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by military means, the adoption of the principle of territorial integrity as the only acceptable, virtually cancel out the other two underlying principles, clearly stated in the Tbilisi Declaration - the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes, as well as the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.

Equally dangerous was the statement by A. Aliyev, delivered the day before yesterday, on February 17, 2017 in an interview with Al Jazeera: “... Armenia’s attempts to strengthen or sometimes to normalize relations with some Muslim countries cause great surprise. I believe that the resolution of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, openly recognizing Armenia as an aggressor, should be the main message to all Muslim countries willing to develop relations with Armenia.” What is this if not carefully veiled call to Islamic radicals - to start a “jihad” - Allahu Akbar. A similar call was made by the Apsheron Sultan only two and a half months after the foreign ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group (S.Lavrov, John Kerry, J-M. Eyraud) jointly issued a statement on December 8, 2016, which states: “In light of the dramatic escalation in violence along the Line of Contact in April, we express concern over continuing armed incidents, including reports on the use of heavy weapons, and strongly condemn the use of force or the threat of the use of force.  There is no military solution to this conflict and no justification for the death and injury of civilians.  We are also aware of allegations of atrocities (something the Azerbaijani authorities did not even keep as secret, on the contrary, those who committed the atrocities subsequently received awards from Aliyev, smiling cynically posed in front of cameras, holding a decapitated head of the Armenian soldier, and later replicated by the well-known online resources of this country - AG) committed on the battlefield in April, which we condemn strongly.  We appeal to the sides to confirm their commitment to the peaceful resolution of the conflict as the only way to bring real reconciliation to the peoples of the region.” To whom or what the President of Apsheron relies on when openly defies not Armenia, but first of all the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and the OSCE PA. This bold defiance should not be left without due response, especially in our troubled times, when the struggle against international terrorism, headed by Islamic radicals - jihadists enters a decisive phase. There is another side of this issue as well - the moral and ethical side. Of all people Aliyev should know that during April war (2016) unleashed by Azerbaijan, the human losses of Azerbaijan were at least seven times more than the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces.

The President of Azerbaijan, ignoring the lost lives of 700 to 1,000 soldiers, confirms in practice, that his actions are in fact based on the postulates of “jihad”. Moreover, we should note that a whole new perspective on the actions of the Azerbaijani leadership has recently been put forward by Shahin Mirzoyev, member of the Talysh Cultural Council, member of the liberation movement of the Talish, correspondent of the newspaper “Talysh Sado”, who, on February 11 of this year, requested a temporary shelter from the Armenian authorities. He was forced to flee from Azerbaijan with his family due to pressure against ethnic and religious minorities, and crude violations of their rights. On February 15, 2017, Shahin Mirzoyev, speaking at an expert meeting on “Breakthrough of the blockade of Stepanakert: 25 years later”, said “At the forefront are the Talysh. They were called up to the army, we can say, forcibly and immediately sent to the front line, into a meat grinder. Therefore, among the dead are mainly Talysh, Tats, Udine. By surnames you can understand” - he stated – “70-80% of military personnel who are serving on the front lines are the representatives of national minorities. Only 20-30% is the so-called locals, and they call themselves Turks. They do not serve on the front lines, but mostly, they serve as the cook, or serve in the warehouses.” Shahin Mirzoyev explained this situation by the fact that representatives of national minorities are not able to refuse the service on the front lines because by doing so they will jeopardize not only their lives but also their relatives’ lives. Here is what he stated: “At the very least, they will be sued. In addition, their whole family will suffer. I am currently in Armenia and my 92-year-old father is there, and he has already been forced to give me up. Perhaps he does not even understand what is happening, he is an old man.” The sinister nature of actions by Apsheron authorities is clearly visible behind these disclosures by the courageous Talysh journalist. On the one hand, greater involvement of ethnic minorities on the front-line indicates the kind of corruption at the state level, where mainly representatives of national minorities are called up to the front line; on the other hand, this fact is blatant in cynicism of a policy of cleaning Azerbaijan from ethnic minorities, in particular from the Talysh and Lezgins.

For the Apsheron hawks it is absolutely clear that their misanthropic actions may sooner or later become accessible to the international community; moreover, in the case of lifting by the Azerbaijani authorities the ban on visits by international human rights organizations, journalists and bloggers to the Azeri regions bordering with the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, there is no question of talking about exasperated reaction by Apsheron rulers at visits by parliamentarians of the OSCE Member States to Nagorno-Karabakh. In this regard, I would like to thank the authors of the resolution on “Unrestricted Access of Members of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Attending Official OSCE Events and Other Parliamentary Activities” (hereinafter the Resolution), which, despite the fierce resistance by the Azerbaijani delegation to the OSCE PA and their constant patrons, on July 5, 2016, was adopted at the 25^th annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Tbilisi. However, even after the adoption of this Resolution, the Azerbaijani side, in flagrant violation of the spirit of this document, not only prevents the visits of cultural workers, journalists, political and public figures to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, not to mention the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, but also sues them in criminal proceedings. Name but the prosecution of politically motivated Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin, who ventured to visit the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan twice. This shameful fact of repression by the Azerbaijani authorities of the Russian and Israeli citizen, was tackled upon by Konstantin Zatulin, the first Deputy-Chair of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, in the “Moskovsky Komsomolets”. According to him, it is of deep regret that the Azerbaijani side has chosen the hunt for a civilian-blogger and journalist as a means of self-affirmation.

“Such vindictiveness only drops the Azerbaijan shares in the public opinion of those countries which are not indifferent to it. It makes them remember about such “evidence of national omnipotence” as ransom to Hungary for maniac Ramil Safarov, who axed the Armenian officer at night during the NATO courses for officers, and making him a national hero”, - stated Konstantin Zatulin in his article.

I would like to quote some excerpts from the Resolution, in particular Paragraph 5, which states: “Considering that the ban and, in the long term, the lifting of barriers against the movement of people, goods, services and the capital will contribute to the strengthening of trust between the member states and will increase the level of security in the OSCE region”. The list of grave violations by Azerbaijan of agreements reached during summit of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents and resolutions and declarations adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, can be continued. It is important that the initiators and authors of the adoption of these agreements and resolutions come to the main conclusion: Azerbaijan will continue to ignore them, if the leaders of the OSCE Minsk Group, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, this time as well leave without due response the failure to implement the resolutions and agreements  adopted by them, which will inevitably lead to irresponsibility and the temptation to start a new military adventure, thus hoping that in the course the problem of national minorities will be solved...

I want to hope, that the forthcoming session of OSCE PA will be a turning point in the perception of the delegates from the 57 OSCE Member States of their personal responsibility for the fate of peace and security. Indeed, in our incendiary times, we bear personal responsibility for every drop of blood shed, irrespective of where on the planet Earth it is shed. We should start struggling for the establishment of lasting peace in the OSCE area from the so-called "frozen conflicts". Otherwise, in the near future we will have to admit that the most disturbing expectations of the citizens participating in the survey by Gov You about the inevitability of a third world war, will become a reality.

P.S. On February 18 of this year, the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, speaking at the XI Congress of the Union of Volunteers "Yerkrapah", said "The problem of Artsakh (the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic - editor) – is up to the Armenian people, it is a matter of Armenianship: the way the people of Artsakh decide, exactly that will be the future of Artsakh. We, all the people present here, as well as those who are outside of this room, will stand up with all our might for our brothers and sisters of Artsakh. I consider it my duty to declare from this podium of the congress that all possible provocations (from the Azerbaijani side - editor) will receive a fitting rebuff. The Azerbaijani policy based on illusions, has no future and will not have. The proof of what was said is the experience of the past decades." It seems that the leitmotif of the winter session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, its motto should righteously be the statement: A policy based on illusions, creates fertile ground for incitement to war, and is a threat to peace and security.

ARTASHES GEGHAMYAN

Member of the RA Parliament from the Republican party,

Head of the delegation of the RA National Assemblyin the

OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,

Head of the Party “National Unity”