Today, there are a lot of political parties that have become active and are talking about peace. The peace we Armenians need is gained, not talked about during seminars. This is what political figure, former Director of the National Security Service of Armenia Davit Shahnazaryan said during the “Armenia-Artsakh Strategic Alliance” forum taking place in Artsakh.

Shahnazaryan particularly said the following:

“This forum is the first step of a long process. What has gathered us here today is the deep concern about the security of the two Armenian republics. Of course, I welcome the signing of a document by the two republics, and I will try to state the processes that it will lead to. I would like to divide them into a couple of parts, including foreign policy, negotiations and security.

Today, we are living in a world where there is no international law or the security system that was established after WWII. Besides the establishment of this strategic alliance, I attach more importance to international recognition of the Republic of Artsakh. We need to work hard for this. There were people who talked about a hybrid war, and we need to advance our interests in that war because dual standards serve as the backbone of foreign policy.

As for negotiations, we need a pro-Armenian agenda, allies and friends, yet we must never forget that there will not be peace through negotiations because the adversary’s goal is not to seize the “seized territories” and the land on which we are located, but to eliminate the Armenian states. We need to be ready for this.

When we talk about security, we need to take into consideration Artsakh’s international recognition and Artsakh becoming an international subject. There are political parties that have become active and are talking about peace. Peace is a high value, but the independence of Artsakh and Armenia and one homeland with two states are much higher values.

I believe it is extremely important for us to agree on all this, just like we did during the Artsakh war. One of our greatest achievements was the consolidation of all Armenians in April 2016, and this sparked concerns among many countries abroad. Now they are trying to thrust a wedge in that.”