The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, on Wednesday delivered an address at the Special Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.

With respect to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, Nalbandian specifically stated as follows:    

Azerbaijan has failed the cooperation with the OSCE in all dimensions and instead of using it as a floor for the genuine discussions dares to exploit the Organization for the purposes of pushing its narrow political agenda. Some of you have witnessed how Azerbaijan threatened to veto the entire budget of the OSCE if any financing is allocated to the creation of the investigative mechanism.

And this is not the only case when Azerbaijan attempted to paralyze the work of the Organization. The same happens during the preparatory phase of almost every Ministerial Council, when Azerbaijan takes hostage our joint decisions in an attempt to impose its narrow objectives. The same happened when Azerbaijan while downgrading the status of the OSCE office in Baku at the same time tries to hinder the operation of field missions in the neighboring participating states. Last but not least Azerbaijan entertains itself by introducing fabricated titles on each PC agenda.

Azerbaijani provocations on the line of contact with Nagorno-Karabakh and border with Armenia have also been matched with Azerbaijani consistent bellicose, warmongering rhetoric and anti-Armenian hate speech. On numerous occasions Baku threatened to solve the conflict by military means and claim that Armenia and its millennia old capital are Azerbaijani lands. Those journalists, activists and the intelligentsia who have been advocating for peace and reconciliation are all persecuted as “Armenian spies”. Azerbaijani authorities punish those who dare to think about reconciliation and rewarding those who commit crimes against Armenians.

Baku continues to oppose the Minsk Group Co-Chairs and is doing its utmost to undermine the peace talks. It rejects the proposals that are the product of the tireless efforts of the last six years – about twenty summits, several dozen ministerial-level meetings, innumerable visits by the three Co-Chairs to the region. Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan, has stated many times that it is ready to continue negotiations, based on the proposals of the Co-Chair countries.

Instead of engaging in the negotiations Baku tries to present its own ideas on creation of the imitation of negotiations, as proposals of the Co-Chairs, misinterprets the essence of the conflict and negotiation process and undertakes a campaign of denigration against the Minsk Group Co-Chairs. It also continuously attacks the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. Facing this reality, the Minsk Group Co-chairs in January 27th were obliged to remind the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan about their mandates and they (I quote) “expressed concern about voices critical of the ongoing negotiation process, the role of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, and the duties of OSCE monitors” (end of quote).