Azerbaijan should be stripped of its rights over NKR – political scientist
What is called as status quo is about a territory that belongs to certain people and is under their military-political military, yet all the rights over the territory are enjoyed by Azerbaijan, since the territory is ‘legally recognized’ as part of Azerbaijan, political scientist Manvel Sargsyan told at a discussion, entitled “One year after the April War: Debates over the Artsakh status quo.”
“Azerbaijan keeps speaking of that territory every day saying the issue remains its internal affair and no one has the right to intervene. They even claim that Article 51 of the UN Charter authorize them to return the territory using force,” Sargsyan presented the Azerbaijani perspective, adding no proper arguments are brought against these statements, except those that as a UN and OSCE member state Azerbaijan is committed to resolve the conflict through exclusively peaceful means.
“Whenever we speak of fragile peace, we refer to the existing situation. Is has already been 25 years the Minsk Group has been suggesting to replace the existing status quo by another algorithm - verify the status of some of territories, hand over the others to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan thus is making use of the fact that the world recognizes its sovereignty over those territories, while the Armenian side fiercely struggles for the Artsakh recognition,” Sargsyan said.
He next suggested the Republic of Armenia should work toward stripping Azerbaijani of its rights on NKR.
“The settlement process has turned into a pyramid. There is taboo that hinders to finalize he process. During the April war the world didn’t condemn Azerbaijan, instead bolstering it to defend its so-called rights. Today our primary task is to strip it of its rights,” concluded the political scientist.