"Armenia's goal is to provoke Azerbaijan into retaliation" Experts' views on Yerevan's insidious plans

Speaking at the Conference on Disarmament on the eve of his meeting with Jeyhun Bayramov in Berlin, Ararat Mirzoyan echoed Pashinyan's narrative about the need to sign a non-aggression pact and an arms control treaty with Baku. In his words, it is necessary "for the sake of confidence building and peace in the South Caucasus".

"We have proposed reciprocal troop withdrawals from the Armenia-Azerbaijan interstate border, with further demilitarisation of border areas. Armenia also proposes establishing a mutual arms control mechanism and signing a non-aggression pact before signing a peace treaty," Mirzoyan said.

Although Baku has previously noted that such proposals are aimed at diverting attention from the process of drafting a bilateral peace treaty and establishing interstate relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Yerevan continues to resort to political manipulation. Undoubtedly, the Armenian side is trying to bring the negotiations to a deadlock.

Political scientist Rasim Musabekov, a member of parliament, agreed with this point of view in an interview with the Caliber.Az correspondent. According to him, such proposals made by Yerevan should be seen as an attempt to avoid concrete negotiations on normalising interstate relations.

"The point is that Mirzoyan is once again putting the cart before the horse because such pacts and treaties are usually concluded after the normalisation of relations between states. But who will sign such treaties if relations are not normalised? What arms control treaty is he talking about? This is just trying to get out of having to negotiate in a meaningful way," said the MP.

According to him, the "non-aggression treaty" announced by Yerevan was last signed before the Second World War between Molotov and Ribbentrop or between the USSR and Imperial Japan. And everyone remembers well how it all turned out.

"In fact, multilateral treaties signed under the Helsinki Accords, rather than bilateral "non-aggression pacts", now determine all security arrangements. And they have been discussed and negotiated for a long time, both Azerbaijan and Armenia have joined them after they became independent states. There is also the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which both Azerbaijan and Armenia have signed. Mr Mirzoyan seems to have forgotten this and is reinventing the wheel," says Musabekov.

What is more, he adds, Armenia has failed to respect all these agreements, hiding behind the protection of separatists, occupying Azerbaijani territory and keeping tanks, artillery and missiles there that are not included in the quotas. And now it is offering some agreements to Azerbaijan.

"Although Armenia simply spat on all the agreements that were in place at the time. No one will even consider what Mirzoyan is offering now. And if he insists on doing this, it will have to be qualified as evading negotiations on normalising interstate agreements," MP noted.

According to Aslan Rubayev, a Russian political scientist, an expert on the CIS countries and director of the Centre for Monitoring Eurasian Problems, the task facing the head of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Ararat Mirzoyan, is not to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan under any circumstances. Such a document would put an end to Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan and would also mean the collapse of the current political regime in Yerevan.

"We have repeatedly seen Armenia trying to provoke Azerbaijan into military retaliation. And I think Armenia will continue to do so until it receives substantial military support from the West. This support will consist of military presence on the territory of Armenia, perhaps even in the form of a limited NATO contingent, shock weapons, which will help Armenia to carry out provocations against Azerbaijan," the expert believes.

According to him, the so-called mediators - France and the US - are not interested in a peaceful settlement of the conflict, but in destabilising the South Caucasus, which is in their interest.

"Azerbaijan is genuinely interested in peace and is ready to sign the necessary documents so that the guns are no longer in use. But unfortunately, the provocations will continue and Yerevan will constantly postpone the deadline to sign a peace treaty. But this is a major miscalculation in Armenian foreign policy. Yerevan is now trying to negotiate financial and military support from the West to wage a major war against Azerbaijan. But contrary to Yerevan's expectations, the West will always be against peace in the region, and the Armenians will never feel comfortable," Rubayev summed up.