Main task is reducing likelihood of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, former human rights defender says
Not only Armenians in Armenia proper and beyond it but also Armenian experts should work to reduce the likelihood of resumption of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, a former human rights defender Larisa Alaverdyan told a press conference today.
She said she has always condemned ungrounded statements about the possible date of resumption of hostilities.
Alaverdyan expressed confidence that if both government and public structures work at the proper level, there will be no war. In this context, she commended the establishment of a direct Armenian-Azerbaijani communication line, achieved by Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose grouping of a dozen former Soviet republics, in October in Tajikistan.
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the communication line was to prevent incidents on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. According to Alaverdyan, establishing communication line should not replace other possibilities of preventing hostilities.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict erupted into armed clashes after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s as the predominantly Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan sought to secede from Azerbaijan and declared its independence backed by a successful referendum.
On May 12, 1994, the Bishkek cease-fire agreement put an end to the military operations. A truce was brokered by Russia in 1994, although no permanent peace agreement has been signed. Since then, Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjacent regions have been under the control of Armenian forces of Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is the longest-running post-Soviet era conflict and has continued to simmer despite the relative peace of the past two decades, with snipers causing tens of deaths a year.
On April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan launched military assaults along the entire perimeter of its contact line with Nagorno-Karabakh. Four days later a cease-fire was reached. -0