In an interview with Asbarez Editor Ara Khachatourian, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA-28) urged U.S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick to abandon false parity in the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.
Adam Schiff stressed that such a policy creates favorable conditions for Azerbaijan to continue its aggression. The Congressman said that he expressed his concern in a letter to Ambassador James Warlick, emphasizing that Azerbaijan is the belligerent side in the conflict.
"I have written to the ambassador, raising my concerns over this policy of equivalence, because the actions are not at all equivalent. You have Azerbaijan firing from tank and artillery, using snipers to kill soldiers in Nagorno-Karabakh, across the Line of Contact : And I think what's happening here - and it's very dangerous - is domestic discontent rises in Azerbaijan, and the economies struggle and the lower oil prices have not helped to prop up that dictatorship, and Aliyev is doing what a lot of dictators do, which is cracking down on dissent, and, in the case of the Line of Contact, sparking a fight with the neighbor to distract the society from the domestic problems," the Congressman said. Mr Schiff also stressed the need to take preventive measures to curb the Azerbaijani aggression on the Line of Contact. "Not surprisingly, that's something that Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia have agreed to, while Azerbaijan has resisted. That tells the world a lot about who's the provocateur here," he said.
When commenting on the anti-Armenian resolutions discussed at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Congressman Schiff emphasized the need to keep mobilizing against them.