WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (D-CA) has called upon the State Department to refrain from responding to future acts of Azerbaijani aggression with statements suggesting a “ false equivalence between Azeri and Armenian behavior,”  reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA.)

In a letter addressed to Ambassador James Warlick, the State Department's representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group's Nagorno Karabakh peace process, Representative Schiff warned that any “unwillingness to speak plainly about the aggressor in this conflict sends the message to Azerbaijan that it can act with impunity.”

“We join with friends of Armenia from across California and throughout the United States in thanking Representative Schiff - a leading Congressional voice on foreign affairs and intelligence issues - for challenging Ambassador Warlick's continued refusal to directly confront Azerbaijan's escalating aggression,”  said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.  “We share Congressman Schiff's concern about the very real dangers of State Department's reckless and irresponsible policy of artificial evenhandedness. We join his call for a transition from this demonstrably failed approach to an accountability-based model of peacekeeping that will help save lives, prevent war, and create the conditions for a just and durable peace.”

Rep. Schiff noted, in this letter, the “disturbing increase in Azeri violations of the cease fire along the Line of Contact,” citing Azerbaijan's unscheduled military exercises along the border and the September 2nd shelling of Armenia, which led to the death of two soldiers and a number of injured civilians.  “Simply put, it is evident that Azerbaijan continues to be the aggressor along the Line of Contact, terrorizing civilians and military forces with shelling and snipers,”  explained Schiff. “This has been the case throughout the period of the cease fire, in which Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have readily agreed to measures such as international observers or the withdrawal of sniper positions, while Azerbaijan rejects such steps.”

Congressman Schiff added that, while he joins with Ambassador Warlick in seeking a peaceful and durable resolution to the Karabakh issue, “I do not believe the cause of peace is served by ignoring Azerbaijan's increasing belligerence and the suggestion that both parties are equally to blame for violence along the Line of Contact when that is not the case.”