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The press secretary of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday informed about the intention to include the Latvian Saeima deputy Sergejs Potapkins in “the black list” for visiting the Nagorno Karabakh Republic during the conflict escalation on the contact line between the Karabakh and Azerbaijani forces.

Panorama.am reached for the Latvian MP for a comment.

What were the circumstances and goals of your visit to the Nagorno Karabakh Republic?

For already a couple of years, I have been heading the Latvia - Armenia Interparliamentary Co-operation Group. We call such groups “friendship groups” for simplicity. Indeed, we have established friendly relations with the Armenian ambassador Araik Ayvazyan and diaspora representatives. We meet regularly and cooperate intensively, including on sensitive or critical issues. Last year, we opened an exhibition in Riga with them dedicated to the Armenian Genocide Centennial. 

An intensive inter-parliamentary cooperation is being established between Latvia and Armenia. We have received the NA Vice president Eduard Sharmazanov on several occasions, and the president of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, visited our country last year in the frameworks of the Latvian Presidency in the Council of Europe.

When I read the news about the recommencement of military action in the NKR, I immediately called the Armenian ambassador to wish a quick ceasefire and to learn about how the situation was developing.

Later, Mr. Sharmazanov offered me to visit the region personally as an observer. As the chairman of the friendship group, I did not hesitate to accept the offer.

Have you witnessed the situation in the border regions affected by the shelling of the Azerbaijani side?
Fortunately, by the time I arrived in Yerevan, the military action in the conflict zone had already stopped. We visited the Yerablur memorial to the victims and laid flowers on the fresh graves. My greatest wish was that their number did not increase and that civilians did not wake up at nights from the artillery cannonade sounds.

Are you already informed about the Azerbaijani side’s reaction to your visit to the NKR? Did you know about the existence of the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry's “black list"? And, how will you comment on the official Baku’s position?

The Press Service of the Azerbaijani MFA has stated that it considers my visit a provocation and intends to include me in the “black list.”

I do not see any provocation in calls for preventing civilian victims, for ceasefire and peaceful settlement. To provoke the sides to a further development of the conflict was not certainly among the goals of the visit. On the contrary, in that way, I wanted to show the civilians of Nagorno Karabakh that the “frozen conflict” status does not mean that they no longer exist for the rest of the world, and that the news about the four-day war has not gone unnoticed against other events taking place worldwide.

As for the existence of the “black list,” I was aware of that practice and I knew that my visit could cause such a sharp reaction from Baku. Nevertheless, it was a considerate decision, and I think it is wrong to impose sanctions against people who arrive as observers in order to get information from the primary source and declare about the inadmissibility of the attempts to resolve regional conflicts in a military way.