Unsettled Karabakh conflict plays into Baku’s hands: ex-OSCE MG co-chair

Unsettled Karabakh conflict plays into Baku’s hands: ex-OSCE MG co-chair

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia is right in insisting on the full conformity between such international principles as non-use of force, peoples’ right to self-determination and territorial integrity. Azerbaijan, on the contrary, is focused on the principle of territorial integrity only, former French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Jacques Faure said at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s 89th Rose-Roth seminar in Yerevan, according to Tert.am.

At the Armenian-Azerbaijani presidential meeting in Paris last year, both sides admitted that the unsettled Nagorno Karabakh conflict plays into Azerbaijan’s hands as "the time factor for Azerbaijan means they hope to benefit from the demographic disproportion in the region.”

Elaborating on the subject, Faure said that Azerbaijan has a population of 9 million, while Armenia’s population is only 3 million, with the demographic disproportion still growing.

Azerbaijan also seeks to benefit from its oil and energy profits, which have for years been directed to arms purchase.

Azerbaijan’s military budget, by the way, exceeds Armenia’s state budget.

One of the reasons why the Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains unsettled is, according to Faure, lack of trust between the sides. The state leaders’ lack of political will for mutual concessions is another reason.

Each of the sides mentions arrangements that have not been maintained, as well as hostility by the opposite side, despite the fact that avoiding collisions is one of the major tasks of thw international process.

Faure said that at a certain moment the two sides will have to give up something in exchange for something else.

According to him, the domestic political processes result in the lack of political will. The two states’ leaders fear criticism.

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