
ArmInfo.From the geopolitical point of view this year was an important one for Armenia, it could resist not only the external threat, but to turn the winner, turkologist Ruben Safrastyan, the Director of Armenian NAS Oriental studies Institute expressed his opinion at December 23 press conference in Yerevan.
According to the expert, the April victory of Armenian Military forces has accentuated a very important fact: Armenia could improve own military power during last years and Armenia should be considered as a regional player. "On the other hand, Armenian diplomacy began to realize, that the time came to exit the old frames of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement negotiations, and to change its flow. The OSCE Minsk Group applied the blind eye to the military statements of Azerbaijan, which, in its turn, caused the April aggression. In this respect there is a need to change the essence on the negotiations process. The OSCE Minsk group should continue its mission on mediation, but there are new elements to be applied to continue the negotiations, ruling out the possible aggression of Azerbaijan," the expert mentioned.
At that, the oriental expert thinks that at the first stage such elements could be the creation of incidents investigation tools and the expansion of the OSCE Chairman personal representative's mandate. "But we should not stop at that. The second stage should be setting the punishment measures to prevent any new hostile actions of the aggressor," Safrastyan mentioned.
At the same time the expert is confident that Armenia should be ready for any gamble of Azerbaijan at any moment, because the official Baku did not give up the idea to solve the issue in military way.