YEREVAN. – Hraparak daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: Secretary of the SC [(Security Council)] Armen Grigoryan was participating from Armenia in the joint session of the CSTO Foreign Ministers, Defense Ministers, and SC secretaries yesterday.

If Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan has been in Russia for several days and is in such important negotiations on our border tension issues that even the death of [his] mother did not force him to return urgently, then [FM] Ararat Mirzoyan’s absence from these events is incomprehensible. Yesterday, the MFA spokesman had conveyed reporters that Mirzoyan did not leave for Dushanbe due to a plane malfunction. This explanation had caused laughter in the MFA; they were calling it clumsy and baseless.

And as for what the real reason is for not leaving for Dushanbe [to attend the aforesaid joint session], they assume: "Probably, he had an agenda of meeting with more important European officials, that's why he did not leave."

Our source conveys that it is not ruled out that this is a response from the RA to the indifference shown by the CSTO in the Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] war [last fall] and the [Azerbaijani] encroachments on the RA borders.