YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Davit Babayan, spokesman of the President of Artsakh, attaches importance to the January 18 meeting of Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian and foreign minister of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov in the Polish city of Krakow. According to him, this and similar meetings are key factors on maintaining the continuation of the peaceful negotiation process and peace and stability in the region.

“We attach importance to this and do not share the view that these meetings are just meetings and have no significance. Eventually, during these meetings the ongoing issues, as well as issues relating to the settlement are being discussed, during these meetings the international community expresses its stance, therefore, they are important. And the key idea of this meeting is that it seems steps are being taken aimed at implementing the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreement, in other words, discovering and reducing the number of ceasefire violations, as we know that the expansion of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office was announced. Official Stepanakert was long talking about this”, Davit Babayan said, reminding that different proposals were made by Artsakh which interested to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

“The talk is about the withdrawal of snipers, excluding ceasefire violations during holidays and international, national and religious holidays. These are very important, but also the processes before this are very important, in particular, the statement of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov according to which it is impossible to settle this conflict by one document, but if we open further the brackets, it can be even said that this is a philosophical approach since it cannot be settled by a document as long as the atmosphere in the region is not settled, Azerbaijan continues its Nazi policy. In this case, even if 1000 documents are signed, nothing will change, therefore, this is a message that it is necessary to gradually change this atmosphere and make the dialogue more substantial”, he said.

Davit Babayan also commented on the issue of Artsakh’s involvement in the negotiation process, stating that this is already an imperative.

“We always talk about this and believe that without it the issue cannot be settled, but we also need to be realistic that Azerbaijan will do everything for this not to happen in 2018 which is going to be a year of speculations. We know that this year marks the 100^th anniversary of that artificially created country, presidential election will be held, the 95^th anniversary of Heydar Aliyev and etc”, Babayan said, adding that there will be hysterias in diplomatic, political fields, some terrorist actions, provocative actions on the border are also not ruled out. “In other words this is an understandable issue, and it can be predicted that Azerbaijan will do everything to prevent Artsakh’s involvement in the negotiation process. But on the other hand, Artsakh is engaged in the negotiation process, but not fully. We continue working on this path to restore the full format”, the Artsakh presidential spokesman said.