The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, delivered a statement at the 21st Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, which was convened Thursday in Basel, Switzerland.

“It is clear that international community should not tolerate the attempts of the Azerbaijani leadership to adjust the international law to their own racist ideology. Having a rich internal experience in corruption Baku is attempting to transfer it to interstate relations exploiting it as a tool to impose its own misperceptions on others. The international community could not tolerate the attempts of Azerbaijan to replace the rule of law with the rule of oil.

“In the last August, September and October, the Co-Chair countries, first the President of Russia in Sochi, then the Secretary of State of the USA in Newport, and then the President of France in Paris, with participation of the Heads of States of Armenia and Azerbaijan, organized Summit meetings to reduce the tensions and prevent further escalation of the situation.

“Immediately after the Paris meeting the leadership of Azerbaijan raised another wave of anti-Armenian provocative rhetoric, and the Defense Minister of that country claimed again that his country would solve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue through military means.

“The recent shooting down by the Azerbaijani armed forces of the helicopter of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army during a training flight, which took the lives of three young servicemen, is Baku’s latest criminal provocation. The Azerbaijani army for almost ten days continuously kept the area of the helicopter shooting under intensive fire, hindering rescue teams, the OSCE, International Committee of the Red Cross representatives to approach that site and evacuate the bodies of killed crew members, which became another gross violation of international humanitarian law by Azerbaijan.

“Baku continues to oppose itself to the international community, which was once again demonstrated by its reaction to the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on the helicopter shooting. Azerbaijan is clearly losing the sense of reality and day by day is deepening the gap between itself and the civilized world.

“To achieve a durable peace, stability and security in the region, Armenia will continue to invest its utmost efforts towards the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict exclusively through peaceful means and on the basis of the purposes, principles and norms reflected in the UN Charter, Helsinki Final Act and the provisions of the statements of the Minsk Group Co-Chair Countries’ Presidents in L’Aquila, Muskoka, Deauville, Los Cabos and Enniskillen,” Armenia’s FM noted, in particular.