Azerbaijan could not have decided at its sole discretion to renew the hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), a military expert has said, commenting on Azerbaijan’s frontline offensives that escalated into a four-day war in early April.
At a news conference on Saturday, Hayk Nahapetyan, a retired Armenian general, cited Secretary of State John Kerry’s earlier statement made at the meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (in which the US official expressed support to Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity) as a serious stimulus for the country to unleash fresh acts of aggression.
“US Secretary of State John Kerry stated that he affirms support to Azerbaija’s territorial integrity; [Vice President Joe] Biden too, spoke in support of that. None of those statements have been denied to date. What does a change in the status quo imply? It implies a violation of the ceasefire regime, change in the negotiation format and mobilization [of troops] on the border. Those statements gave President Aliyeb the green light to launch military operations. Just a day after the statement, aggression erupted against Artsakh,” he noted.
Nahapetyan also referred to the statement by Pedro Argamunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), that called for the Armenians troops’ withdrawal from the “occupied” regions. “With Artsakh facing a war, the PACE president hopes that Azerbaijan will seize those lands; so he is preparing legal grounds for that. The statement hasn’t changed. It was only thanks to the Armenian Army that the Azerbaijani troops were pushed back,” he added.