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“Official Baku not only steps back from its agreements but also sets new preconditions, something that contradicts the logic of peacefully negotiated settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” expert Tigran Abrahamyan told Panorama.am, commenting on Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s statement that Azerbaijan will agree to introduction of mechanisms for investigating incidents at the line of contact if “Armenian troops vacate the occupied territories.”

The expert noted that Sochi hosted a tripartite meeting between Presidents of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan in 2011, when the sides agreed on working out mechanisms for investigating incidents at the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces.

“More, agreements reached in Sochi were reconfirmed at a tripartite presidential meeting in January 2012. However, Azerbaijan steps back from these agreements,” Abrahamyan stressed.

The expert also made a comment to the Azerbaijani official’s remark that “status quo will be maintained if this mechanism is put into action now.”

“If we put this part of Mammadyarov’s statement more clearly, it turns out that contact line stability is not beneficial for Baku, because, according to the Azerbaijani side, status quo is maintained in that case, so Azerbaijan will always instigate provocations until a final settlement is reached,” Abrahamyan said.

Asked to comment on Mammadyarov’s statement that “if Armenia doesn’t want its soldiers to die, it must withdraw from the Azerbaijani lands,” the expert said: “Official Baku again resorts to blackmail policy. We must say that both sides sustain casualties, but how Azerbaijan values its soldiers – this is quite a different question. Armenian side’s task is not to fight the situation that is created as a result of the Azerbaijani provocations but to try to prevent it.”