The permanent sabotage attacks of Azerbaijan demonstrate that the war in the Karabakh conflict zone is not over, Hovhannes Sahakyan, member of the Republican Party of Armenia, Head of the Armenian State Parliamentary Commission for State and Legal Affairs, has told ArmInfo correspondent.
He thinks that the permanent Azeri sabotage attacks on the Line of Contact with Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as on the Armenian-Azeri border can be explained by Baku's diplomatic fiasco at the table of negotiations on the Karabakh conflict settlement. "The status quo is maintained in the conflict zone and Nagorno-Karabakh is a de facto independent state. Therefore, Baku is eager to compensate for its losses by sabotage attacks", he says.
He also says that despite Armenia's commitment to peace, if Azerbaijan continues its strategy of sabotage attacks, Armenia may change its "benevolence" towards Nakhijevan and ensure a direct railway service with Iran via the territory of Nakhijevan.
Sahakyan thinks that the international community should adequately assess the actions of Azerbaijan. "I consider that under the current conditions the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the international community should be targeted, clear and harsh and should be addressed to the party, which is guilty of destabilizing the situation. In this case, it is Azerbaijan, which has already started mounting sabotage attacks on Armenia's territory as well", he says.
To note, Azeris made new attempts to mount a sabotage attack on the Armenian-NKR section of the border (near Karvachar) last week. The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry has told ArmInfo that they revealed and neutralized all members of the Azerbaijani subversive group. Some members of the group were captured, and others escaped. As reported earlier, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army released a photo of Gyulin Shahbaz Jalaloghlu (born in 1968), the captured member of the Azerbaijani sabotage and intelligence team. Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan informed on Saturday that the Armenian soldiers killed an Azerbaijani saboteur while neutralizing the subversive group on Friday. But an Armenian officer, major Sarkis Abrahamyan (born in 1972) was killed and an Armenian woman, Karina Davtyan (born in 1977) was wounded.