11:37,

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The international community and mediators should demand from Azerbaijan to take adequate steps in response to Armenia’s steps of confidence building, Ambassador-at-Large Edmon Marukyan has said.

“The lack of confidence between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a fundamental problem and it must be solved in order to reach any meaningful results in the peace process. I can confidently state that during the last two years, the Prime Minister of Armenia has taken all possible and seemingly impossible steps to build confidence in peace talks in order to achieve long-lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Marukyan said in a post on X.

“In response to all those steps, Azerbaijan continued to keep prisoners of war and other civilians in its prisons, abducted new hostages from the territory of Armenia and the Lachin Corridor, did not withdraw its troops from the sovereign territories of Armenia, attacking it periodically, killing and wounding more people… keeps the communications blocked, torpedoes delimitation process of state borders, besieges and starves 120,000 people of Nagorno-Karabakh, rejects talks between Baku and Stepanakert under international mechanisms. All this has undermined and continues to damage the peace process, as well as the efforts of all mediators invested in it. Now, in addition to all of that, Azerbaijan has concentrated its troops along the contact line of Nagorno-Karabakh and the sovereign territory of Armenia, and focused all its state propaganda to war talks, threatening the fragile regional peace. In order to return the peace process to its comprehensible stage, the international community and mediators should demand from Azerbaijan to take adequate steps in response to Armenia’s steps of confidence building. As a result of this, Azerbaijan shall stop the blockade of Nagorno Karabakh, start talks with the representatives of Nagorno Karabakh within the framework of the international mechanism that will guarantee the rights and security of its people, shall withdraw its armed forces from the sovereign territory of Armenia, release all prisoners of war and other detained persons from Azerbaijani prisons, shall begin the process of delimitation and demarcation based on the map of 1975, and unblock all transport communications based on the sovereignty of the parties and national legislation. These are the minimum steps that can build confidence for bringing long-lasting peace in the region,” he added.