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The Head of the RA NA Delegation to OSCE PA, the Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations Eduard Aghajanyan gave a speech at Autumn Meeting.

“Dear colleagues,

Having no intention to undermine the grave repercussions that the war in Ukraine has had on the OSCE region, I would like to draw your attention to a different area of this organization. Starting from May 12 2021, Azerbaijan has started a process of a crawling invasion of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.

Since then, there have been three major military attacks by Azerbaijan (the latest being in mid-September this year), as a result of which their troops have occupied about 180 sq/km of the sovereign territory of Armenia. A fact, which was oddly admitted by the president of Azerbaijan himself, who said literally the following: “Now the Armenian people know what occupation and loss mean.” The international community has also been largely firm and united in its assessment, reaffirming that Azerbaijani troops have indeed invaded the sovereign territory of Armenia and should relocate to their pre-May 12 positions. So, what are Azerbaijan’s justifications of such blatant actions?

1.These actions were a result of imaginary military provocations of Armenia

2.Since there is no delimitated border between Armenia and Azerbaijan (practically implying that there is no existing border between the countries), then there is no basis to accuse one of intrusion.

Apart from the fact that Armenia is a democratic state, and democracies don’t tend to attack their neighbors, I’d like to draw your attention to the purely practical aspect of these baseless accusations. From 2010 to 2021 included, the average military budget of Azerbaijan has been six fold that of Armenia. So what our colleagues from Azerbaijan are expecting you to believe, is that an army at least 6 times smaller than theirs is continuously engaging in military provocations. This is insulting to logic and intelligence.

The argument of the absence of a delimitated border is even more absurd and overall a very dangerous narrative. Because if there is no border between the two countries, the principle of territorial integrity, which has been the cornerstone of Azerbaijani diplomacy in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict becomes completely pointless, because if there is no border, then there is no identified territory. If there is no territory, then the integrity of what have you been talking about throughout the last 30 years?

Dear colleagues, I would have preferred to use this platform to engage in constructive dialogue with the delegation from Azerbaijan, but unfortunately they still do not genuinely share our peace agenda. Therefore. we will make sure that our international colleagues from the OSCE are duly informed about the actual situation in the South Caucasus, expecting an adequate reaction to the blatant acts of aggression by Azerbaijan.

Thank you for your attention,” Eduard Aghajanyan concluded his speech.