Galust Sahakyan: Provocation by Baku is directed at destabilization in region
Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Galust Sahakyan delivered a speech at the plenary session of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly held in Saint Petersburg on November 27.
Below is the full text of the speech, posted on the official website of the Armenian parliament.
“On November 12, 2014 the MI-24 helicopter of Nagorno-Karabakh implementing training flight has been shot down by the Azerbaijani armed forces, as a result of which the whole crew died.
The helicopter has fallen down in the environs of the contact of line established by the agreement on the ceasefire signed by Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia in May 1994. However, the site of the helicopter accident was under permanent fire by the Azerbaijani fire about 10 days, which did not give opportunity to remove the bodies of the deceased. The representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the OSCE were not even allowed approaching the accident venue.
This provoking action of Baku is unequivocally directed at the destabilization in the region. Such impudent actions serve as a challenge for the whole international community and, first of all, for the mediators of the negotiations of the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The provocations of Azerbaijan in August of this year at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, as well as at the line of contact between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh brought the region to dangerous line, and beyond it wide-scale military operations could begin. And only due to adequate suppressed actions of the Armenian side towards the initiator’s provocations, the Russian President’s personal involvement, as well as the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs it was managed to avoid wide-scale war.
The feeling of impunity and the absence of decent addressed condemnation only intensify the illusion of military solution of the issue existing in the ruling elite, which increases the danger of destabilization of the regional situation through the fault of the Azerbaijani side.”