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Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan sent a letter to NATO Parliamentary Assembly President John Tanner. According to the NA information department, the letter reads:

 “Dear Mr. Tanner,

I am addressing you regarding a possible report on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue to be prepared for the discussion at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. To be frank, I am surprised that such a step might have been taken without proper consultations with members of the Armenian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

As known, currently the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process runs under the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs USA, France and Russia. It is our strong conviction that given the confidentiality, specificity and delicacy of the negotiations, the initiatives held in formats other than the Minsk Group co-chairmanship, even with a good intent, include a great danger of jeopardizing the negotiating process and undermining the mediation efforts. Therefore, any initiative on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution requires prior consultations with the Co-Chair States of the Minsk Group, having in view that the USA and France are both NATO members.

The attempts of Azerbaijan to raise the Nagorno-Karabakh issue within different international formats are aimed at advertising Azerbaijan’s own perception of the conflict resolution with disregard of the entirety of principles proclaimed by the Co-Chairs as the basis for the conflict resolution. It is worth mentioning that the Co-Chair countries voted against the resolution proposed by Azerbaijan at the UN General Assembly session in March, 2008, stating that the “resolution selectively propagates only some of the principles [of the conflict resolution] excluding others.”

Just a few days ago, exactly on July 17, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Bernard Kouchner, and Deputy Secretary of State of the United States of America James Steinberg issued a statement in which they reaffirmed the principles and elements of the conflict resolution stated by the Presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group’s Co-Chair countries at the G8 Summit of June 26, 2010 in Muskoka. They once again stressed the point that the mentioned principles and elements have been conceived as an integrated whole and that any attempt to give preferences over other principles would make it impossible to achieve a balanced solution.

With due respect to an authoritative organization like the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, we consider it our duty to remind that in non-distant past a NATO PA report on Nagorno-Karabakh provoked selective references, unsubstantiated interpretations, and wrong speculations. I believe that the report in no way has contributed to the creation of a favorable environment for the settlement process. I do not see any reason why this new initiative may yield a different result.

It was due to the clear understanding of the sensitivity of the issue that Secretary General Rasmussen and other NATO high ranking officials voiced their strong support for the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group on different occasions and stressed that NATO did not have direct involvement in the issue nor did it play a role of its own in the mediation process.

Based on these concerns, Honorable Mr. President, I would like to strongly advise and suggest that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly refrains from addressing the issue on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “