The position of the official Stepanakert on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unchanged. The major and pivotal direction is the elimination of the causes of the conflict, not the effects. This is what press speaker of the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic David Babayan announced in an interview with Panorama.am, commenting on the statement by U.S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick.

“If an attempt is being made to reflect on the effects without taking into consideration the causes, nothing good will come out of that. The fact that we now have other borders and a different military and political situation is the consequence of war. if the causes are not eliminated, then how can we reflect on the effects?” the speaker added.

According to him, if there is still no final political solution to the issue regarding the status of Artsakh, there can be no discussion on the return of territories or other issues.

“We have said several times that we’re not against discussing any issue and that we’re ready to discuss the issue regarding the refugees, but that discussion has to be on the basis of equality. An Azerbaijani refugee can’t return, if an Armenian refugee can’t return to Baku, Sumgait and other cities where he or she has lived and created,” the Artsakh President’s representative said.

He claimed that the return of borders can’t be an issue simply because that won’t guarantee the security of the people of Artsakh.

“We have said several times that the territories can’t be returned since Arstakh is incapable of surviving with the former borders. Artsakh can’t defend itself since it’s an enclave. Besides that, the opponent will be tempted to solve the issue through military operations and perpetrate a new genocide. This is a fact. It’s part of history. We’re not talking about theory. Since 1988, they have blockaded and organized massacres throughout the entire territory of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. They organized the Sumgait pogroms and emptied northern Artsakh of the Armenians. What, should we forget all this and have the same borders that we had in 1988 so that they can massacre us once and for all? How do you imagine that? How can the opponent regain control over Karvatchar where our rivers start flowing, where the Arpa River and Vorotan River start flowing and flow into Lake Sevan, which provides 80 percent of the water resources of Armenia? The opponent will poison the waters and all Armenians, perpetrating the next genocide. We have seen the precedent in 1990. They did it by poisoning the water supplied to the people of Stepanakert. All domestic animals were eliminated, and many people were transferred to the hospital,” David Babayan said.

When told that Warlick had talked about the need for the installation of peacekeeping forces to ensure the security of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic following the return of the adjacent territories, Babayan said: “So, if an enormous country like the USSR wasn’t able to solve the issue with its troops, how will the peacekeepers be able to do that? We’ve been defending the border without peacekeepers for all these years and there aren’t any problems. The situation is much more stable than in many other zones of conflict.”

Touching upon the opponent’s recent intensive ceasefire violations, the President’s speaker noted that it’s not strange and went on to say the following: “Azerbaijan has always behaved like this. It’s just that it seemed to remain restraint for ten days during the Olympic Games, based on its own interests. But that doesn’t mean that Azerbaijan has changed. Azerbaijan has been and still is a terrorist and Fascist state and nobody can expect any other kind of behavior from it.”