EUFOA: Azerbaijan has chance to regain its credibility by co-operating with OSCE MG

PanARMENIAN.Net - European Friends of Armenia (EUFOA) strongly welcomes the concrete results achieved in this weekend's trilateral summit in Sochi and now calls for their word-by-word implementation, under the lead-management of the OSCE.

"Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan should be congratulated, as this is another concrete achievement of the peace negotiations in recent years, following in particular the presentation of the so-called Madrid Principles and the l'Aquila declaration on July 2009. At the time, this good result was watered down by the unwillingness to accept the Madrid Principles as a whole, which so far only Armenia is ready to do. This time, Azerbaijan has the chance to regain its credibility by co-operating with the OSCE Minsk Group fully in the implementation of the points all parties agreed to in Sochi", commented Michael Kambeck, EuFoA Secretary General.

The Sochi summit, initiated by Russian President Medvedev, has above all produced the following concrete agreements: to conclude in the shortest possible period of time the exchange of prisoners of war; to strive to solve all contentious issues through peaceful means and to investigate possible incidents along the ceasefire line with the participation of the parties under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and with the assistance of the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.

Alongside the trilateral talks, the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents had meetings with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. "Armenia and Azerbaijan have now given a de-facto mandate to the OSCE Minsk Group to fully investigate each future incident on the Line of Contact and this will require an increase of their currently miniscule observation mission staff. If fully implemented, this could be the confidence building step we have for so long been hoping for! Without this, any incident could trigger a so called 'war by accident', while it is clear that any war would be sold as a ‘war by accident’ to the international community, even the most strategic one. That is why the international community could not accept any longer to remain blind eyed by having virtually no observers on the ground and the steps agreed now need to be implemented fully”, concluded Sargis Ghazaryan, EuFoA Senior Research Fellow.