The Azeri attack on Karvachar and the growing tension on the contact line between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan are the result of the statements by OSCE Minsk Group US co-chair James Warlick that the current status quo in Nagorno- Karabakh cannot be preserved, former Human Rights Defender of Armenia Larisa Alaverdyan told journalists on Wednesday.
"The OSCE Minsk Group has proved its inability to force the parties into peace. But instead of trying to do something or at least to suggest some alternatives, it keeps saying that things can no longer stay as they are and this is encouraging the bold-faced Azeri authorities. The co-chairs are not doing their daily work. The Azeris keep giving them pretexts for criticizing them but all they are doing is just conducting regular monitorings. We won in the battlefield but now we are losing in the diplomatic field, which we must not allow," Alaverdyan said.
On the other hand, she believes that the meetings with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev must be continued as any contacts are good for the parties. "We must not reject an offer by a more or less neutral party as once we already accepted a similar offer by Russia, a country that keeps openly selling arms to Azerbaijan," Alaverdyan said.
Last week Nagorno-Karabakh's troops prevented an Azeri raid on Karvachar. Some of the raiders were killed, two - Gulin Shahbaz Jalaloglu and Dilhan Gardashhan - were detained and are now facing criminal charges.