Yerevan dreams of international mission in Karabakh
Dream on since the mission impossible!

ANALYTICS  27 January 2023 - 11:10

In a meeting of the Armenian government yesterday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a new and provocative attack on Azerbaijan, saying "the best way to resolve the conflict is to send an international mission to Karabakh".

"For a long time, Azerbaijan has been trying to convince the international community that the Lachin corridor is not blocked at all and that gas and electricity supplies to Karabakh have not been cut off. Armenia and Karabakh obviously claim the opposite. I think that the best way to resolve the conflict de jure is to send an international fact-finding mission to Karabakh and the Lachin corridor. We must work consistently in this direction," the Armenian Prime Minister said.

Pashinyan's statement suggests that the Armenian leadership, anticipating the imminent arrival of the coveted long-term EU mission, has finally lost all sense of reality and is plotting another provocation against Azerbaijan, adding new colors to the myth of the "blockade" of the Lachin road and counting, as usual, on substantial world support and universal condemnation of Baku. However, if Yerevan managed to come up with clever arguments for the deployment of an EU mission to Armenia, although this was already in Europe's interests, Pashinyan's new absurd initiative to send an international mission to Karabakh has no prospect of becoming true. Baku will not allow any mission to be sent to Karabakh in any case. And here is why.

Firstly, Karabakh is Azerbaijani territory, and therefore any mission here is out of the question without Baku's consent. The situation on the Lachin road is an internal affair of Azerbaijan and the rights and security of the Armenian civilian population in the Karabakh economic zone will therefore be ensured exclusively on the basis of the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Secondly, Armenia for some reason overlooked the presence of Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh. Accordingly, Moscow, as one of the mediators in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations, will inevitably have questions for Yerevan. Russia and the CSTO have also proposed to Yerevan to send a mission to the notional Armenian-Azerbaijani border, but the "country of stones" flatly refused. And... it literally begged Europeans to come to its territory. Moscow has already drawn the appropriate conclusions, as evidenced by yesterday's particular statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russia understands that the EU's decision to send a long-term mission to Armenia was dictated not only by border security issues but also by Armenia's turn towards the West, with all the ensuing circumstances. And Armenia's delusional initiative to send more European envoys to Karabakh under the pretext of an "international mission" is seen in Moscow not only as an attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan but also as another demarche against Russia and Yerevan's total disregard for Russian interests. All the more so since Yerevan has already demonstratively shown a preference for Europe by inviting an EU mission to its territory.

On the other hand, given the political incompetence of the Armenian prime minister, it can be assumed that Yerevan's initiative to send an international mission was also discussed at the latest Armenian-American or Armenian-European talks in connection with the situation on the Lachin road. It is therefore possible that Pashinyan, by provoking Baku and Moscow, is looking for a diplomatic scandal to finally abandon the normalisation of relations with Azerbaijan and the signing of a peace treaty with it.

The Armenian prime minister's aggressive rhetoric, reinforced by false accusations against Azerbaijan that 'Baku plans to open a corridor with the expectation that Karabakh Armenians will leave their homes en masse', confirms this. Of course, such tricks of the Armenian side aimed to stir up the sympathy of the international community, but no matter how hard Yerevan tries to make the world community blind, international law gives strong reasons to Azerbaijan to radically halt any initiative and action against the national interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state. This means that the Armenian aspirations will not succeed in the short term, but also in the foreseeable and not very foreseeable future.

Caliber.Az