Azatutyun.am – The European Union is unfit to be the lead player in brokering a settlement of the Artsakh conflict, a senior official in Stepanakert said on Tuesday.
“For us, the European Council (the EU’s top decision-making body) is not the format where issues of the resolution of the Karabakh conflict should be discussed because it is the OSCE Minsk Group which has an international mandate to do that and which we believe must be the main format,” said Artak Beglaryan, the Artsakh state minister. “There is also the trilateral format of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan which has demonstrated its effectiveness in practice.”
“I don’t think that the European Council has the potential and interests to play a very serious role in a final and comprehensive settlement of the conflict,” Beglaryan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The EU should focus on other issues such as protection of the Karabakh Armenians’ “humanitarian rights” and preservation of their cultural legacy, he said.
The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, has hosted three trilateral meetings with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the last five months.
After the most recent meeting held on May 22, Michel said that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to “advance discussions” on a comprehensive peace treaty between their countries. He said he told them that it is “necessary that the rights and security of the ethnic Armenian population in Karabakh be addressed.”
Artsakh’s leadership denounced the latter remark, saying that the top EU official undermined the Artsakh Armenians’ right to self-determination by portraying them as an ethnic minority not eligible for independent statehood.
Beglaryan likewise suggested that Michel signaled support for Azerbaijani control over the disputed territory.
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