The provoking actions of Baku are aimed at destabilizing the situation in the region, Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Galust Sahakyan said, speaking at the plenary session of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly in Saint Petersburg.
The Speaker said, in part:
“On November 12, 2014 the MI-24 helicopter of Nagorno Karabakh training flight was shot down by the Azerbaijani armed forces during a training flight leaving the three crew members dead.
The helicopter fell close to the line of contact determined by the ceasefire agreement signed between Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia in 1994. However, the crash site was under heavy fire from the Azerbaijani side for ten days, which was making it impossible to remove the bodies of the pilots. Even representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the OSVE were not allowed to approach the site.
This provocation of Baku is clearly aimed at destabilizing the situation in the region. Such impudent steps are a challenge to the international community and primarily the mediators in the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan’s provocations in August of the current year at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh brought the region to a dangerous line, beyond which large-scale military actions could be launched.
Only thanks to adequate actions of the Armenian side, the personal involvement of the Russian President and the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs it became possible to avoid large-scale war.
The feeling of impunity and the lack of targeted condemnation only strengthen the illusion of military solution in the minds of the Azerbaijani ruling elite, which leads to increased threat of destabilization of the situation in the region at the fault of the Azerbaijani side.
