YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The recent events in Nagorno Karabakh not only have long-term destabilization effects, but they will also become a new challenge for international, as well as humanitarian law. “Armenpress” was informed about this by the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian announced this in the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers.  

On April 8 Nalbandian participated in the regular session of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers. The heads of foreign affairs discussed several issues related to the CIS activities and to the rise of its effectiveness.

Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia gave a speech during the session. Referring to the Azerbaijan’s unleashed military operations against Artskah, Edward Nalbandian said:

“Throughout its existence, the CIS has played a role in political, economic, humanitarian and other processes, but it has not always lived up the expectations. It does not manage to prevent a number of negative things that exist in numerous fundamental issues, including that in the security field. One of those issues the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Recent day events not only led to human losses and the intensity of the crisis, to long-term destabilization, but also they can become a new challenge for international, as well as humanitarian law, not only for the UN Charter and for the provisions of fundamental documents of international law, but also they can become a challenge for the CIS Charter where the peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts is also enshrined in.   

These events took place since not everyone agrees with this approach within the CIS. The recent large-scale attacks by Baku against Artsakh violate the ceasefire agreement of 1994 and the reinforcement of 1995 trilateral unidentified ceasefire agreement. By the way, the first agreement was initiated in the sidelines of CIS inter-parliamentary summit. Just from the first hours of the onslaught civilian facilities were deliberately targeted, as a result of which civilians, including children, lost their lives.

The numerous calls of the international community to find a peaceful solution to the conflict were thoroughly ignored by Azerbaijan. Evidently, all these have a severe impact on the negotiation process and the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs”, Nalbandian said, adding that Armenia has called on the international community to restrain Azerbaijan from militaristic aspirations for many times, considering a development of situation in the way we witnessed in the recent days.  He stated that the priority issue of today is to find ways to rule out the reoccurrence of the same situation in the future.

Foreign Minister Nalbandian also referred to organizational issues within the CIS, mentioning that a multidimensional institution is impressive when it operates fully with

“We believe that while taking decisions aimed at deepening partnership in this or that direction, it is necessary to take into account the level of real interest of the member states in that. I want to stress it, real partnership, but not an artificial readiness. We have a situation now when one of the member states signs only 10% of the documents, and the 90% with reservations”, Nalbandian said, stating that when taking a decision it is of key importance to take into account that some of the CIS member states are also member of other integration unions. Nalbandian also stressed that this approach must not lead to limitation of cooperation within the limits of already existing legal documents.

The CIS Foreign Ministers discussed and approved over a dozen of legal documents referring to various cooperation fields in the sidelines of the CIS.