Friday, June 19 2015 10:02

The tension in the Karabakh conflict zone might grow following the European Games in Baku, Jacques Faure, former Co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, France, said at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly's 89th Rose-Roth Seminar in Yerevan on June 19. 

 

Jacques Faure thinks that there will be no resumption of military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh because neither of the Karabakh conflict parties will benefit from it. Though the military budget of Azerbaijan is bigger than the entire budget of Armenia, Azerbaijan will not benefit from the war either, because it will otherwise lose its role on the international arena and will suffer serious economic losses, as it is difficult to attract investments to a country at war, the diplomat said.  

 

The diplomat also thinks that Artsakh can no longer become a part of Azerbaijan because the residents of Artsakh are Armenians and they do not want to change their status. He added that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are "hostages" of their own societies and they want to take no steps to be criticized. They prefer to resolve the conflict step by step, he said.

 

He also touched on Azerbaijan's aspiration to change the OSCE Minsk Group format. Jacques Faure stressed that the changes in the format will hamper the peace process. The diplomat also pointed out the too low confidence between the parties, which can be explained by the numerous cases of ceasefire violation and human deaths. When asked by Armenian MP Tevan Poghosyan whether the OSCE Minsk Group has some mechanisms to exert pressure on Azerbaijan, which regularly breaches the ceasefire in the Karabakh conflict zone, the French diplomat replied that there are very few levers of influence on Baku. There are neither financial levers to influence Azerbaijan nor any other levers to deprive that country of membership in international organizations, he said.