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“Over the past two years before the April escalation we have seen Azerbaijan gradually increasing the caliber, including that of the applied weapons. The April escalation days came as the culmination,” Professor at Yerevan State University, Director of the Armenian branch at the Institute of CIS countries, political analyst Alexander Margarov told reports on Thursday during a press conference.

To Margarov’s conviction, following the April escalation the international community and the mediators alike realized that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict has no military solution and that Azerbaijan should adhere to the arrangements reached back in 1990s as well as the need for establishing mechanisms to monitor ceasefire violations along the Line of Contact [between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan].

“There is an element of uncertainty there. Azerbaijan displays non-constructive policy to the proposals of establishing confidence building mechanisms, showing scant interest in realizing those mechanisms. Why? The answer seems obvious, since Azerbaijan is not keen to reveal who is beyond the ceasefire violations,” reasoned the political scientist, pointing out the uncertainty about the proposal of expanding the mandate of the OSCE personal representative and the idea of enlarging the monitoring group unless it is permanently deployed on the ground.  

Margarov recalled one of the recent OSCE Minsk groups statements calling the ongoing policy leading to escalations as unacceptable, with the authors failing to name Azerbaijan [as the perpetrator].

“The negotiation process is in the same stalemate with parties of such divergent positions that keeps them away of even drafting and agreeing the well-known principles [for the conflict settlement]. That is to say the next step is to bring the sides together over the existing proposals or come up with new suggestions, which seems quite complex,” Margarov said.

Head of “Hayatsk” Analytic Center Liana Hovhannisyan, present at the discussion, argued that the settlement process should be divided into pre-April and post-April periods, adding main issues after the April escalation are about increasing the trust between the sides. In her words, Co-Chairs’ efforts will be aimed at increasing the level of trust between the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides.