ArmInfo. Yerevan should respond to Baku's blackmail of a "sniper war" with a new agenda and the course of negotiations on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by the former head of the NKR MFA, independent analyst Arman Melikyan.
"The authorities of the neighboring country are trying to ensure continuation of negotiations with the new authorities in Yerevan in the Armenia-Azerbaijan format with the ultimate goal of obtaining certain territories in exchange for peace on the Line of Contact. And this is without determining the final status of Artsakh. The answer to this blackmail policy, in my opinion has no alternative - it is the formation of a qualitatively new political and negotiating atmosphere. To ensure this, of course, serious specialized work of the ruling elite in Armenia is required. I am convinced that it is quite possible to fulfill such a task on changing Baku's position", the analyst said.
The beginning of this work, according to Melikyan, has already been laid by the corresponding statement of the official Yerevan in the person of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan about the need to involve the negotiators from Artsakh to the negotiation process. In his opinion, now Armenia should show consistency in confirmation of its own political position, regardless of the wishes and assertions of Azerbaijan, which is striving at all cost to maintain the bilateral negotiation format beneficial to it.
In this light, the analyst attaches great importance to the vision of the new authorities of Armenia for the final resolution of the conflict. He predicted that any attempt to bargain on the conditions proposed by Baku around the Artsakh territories would lead to an immediate and irrevocable loss by the Armenian authorities of the existing, fairly high degree of legitimacy. And vice versa - an achievement consistent with the Armenian interests of a long-term peace around Artsakh will unite Armenians even around an illegitimate government.
Since 1992, the OSCE Minsk Group has been involved in resolving the Karabakh conflict, represented by the co-chairs from Russia, the USA and France. At present, the settlement process is proceeding on the basis of the Madrid Principles put forward by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in 2007 and the Madrid Principles updated in 2009, among other things, providing for the deployment of a peacekeeping force in the conflict zone.