Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) authorities are not against Artsakh-Azerbaijan contacts. Artsakh Minister of State Gurgen Nersisyan wrote about this on Facebook. In particular, he noted as follows:

"A while ago, I gave an interview to the Public Television of Armenia. Taking into account the questions, I once again confirm:

"1. I do not agree with those people or authorities or international players who, speaking about the rights of the people of Artsakh, do not mean also the right to self-determination of the people of Artsakh.

"2. In modern international relations, the case when they starve 120,000 people, torture them, and then say: if you don't want to stay hungry, be tortured, come to negotiations, it should be considered as brutality and terrorism.

"3. The authorities of Artsakh are not against Artsakh-Azerbaijan contacts. But during the negotiation, the possibility of exercising the rights of the parties in accordance with international norms should be guaranteed and protected by international mechanisms. Those guarantees, however, must be convincing and credible.

"4. For more than six months, Artsakh has been under siege [by Azerbaijan], Azerbaijan is constantly using force or threatening to use force against the people of Artsakh, the people of Artsakh are deprived of [natural] gas supply, energy supply, the opportunity to receive proper medical care, sufficient food, the elderly, pregnant women, children and infants are deprived from the possibility of obtaining necessary care items and medicines.

"If the internationally guaranteed protection of the rights of the people of Artsakh looks like this, then we have to record that we currently do not have reliable and convincing guarantees of security and rights."