YEREVAN. – The root causes of the April 2016 war were clear from the start, at least among those with access to confidentiality. Edmon Marukyan, chairman of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (BAP) and head of its faction in the National Assembly (NA), on Wednesday told this to reporters in the NA, referring to the report of the NA inquiry committee investigating the circumstances of the April 2016 war, and which was discussed Wednesday in a closed session of the parliament.

"The committee has done a lot of work. [But] I cannot say that I am [fully] satisfied with the report; the report has some shortcomings; I talked about it in a closed regimen. I can bring an example: If today’s chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces is one of those guilty—and according to the report, he is one of those guilty—, he should not be the chief of the General Staff now. This is an important signal, indicator for me that if that is the case, we do not have an impartial investigation in this sense," he said.

Marukyan believes that the aforesaid report on the April 2016 war should be declassified. "We already have a 44-day [Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war [last fall], and to keep secret the shortcomings of the April [2016] war (…), in my opinion, is not so right. We hope it will be publicized. We are going the way that the report is declassified, the public learn happened and who is to blame; also, also see if those guilty have been punished or not," said the BAP leader.