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Pastinfo news agency spoke to the chairman of «European Integration» NGO Karen Bekaryan to get into the recent developments around the Sarsang water reservoir, which the Nagorno Karabakh Republic authorities suggested Azerbaijan to cooperate, and which the latter denied, resulting a heated debate.

«Well, now I have even bigger concerns that the Azerbaijani side has adopted quite a prevocational stance on Sarsang water reservoir issue. As always, they try to divide, single out some elements from the bigger package, let’s name it «peace process», and make sure to earn dividends on those separated elements», - says Karen Bekaryan, adding that the manipulations on the Sarsang reservoir issue is another expression of that policy.

Bekaryan argues it is crystal clear, that such steps are aimed at showing that Azerbaijan does not feel safe anymore with the present status quo regime, which may attract attention of certain humanitarian organisatons and green movements – not always well up-to-date with the real challenges in the conflict and peace process.

Following up, Bekaryan analyses that the fiercely negative reaction in Azerbaijani ruling circles to the call of cooperation in water management issues from the Nagorno Karabakh authorities has been «quite abnormal». «We can observe the same signature actually. I mean, if you want to move on and settle, you should catch initiatives like this. It may well be there are certain unacceptable elements in such calls, but that gives some room for dialogue», furthers Bekaryan, adding that a quick and negative answer to that initiative from Azerbaijan might have caused the Nagorno Karabakh authorities even to regret for that openness. «They simply tried to create a political show around this», - he concluded.

Meantime, urging not to put parallels between the ruling inherited authoritarian regime of Aliyev family and the common people in Azerbaijan, Bekaryan also underlined, that he would believe the common people in Azerbaijan, if accordingly informed, would actually be glad to bridge that kind of cooperation, since it would have the villagers and the agriculture around the region to benefit.