Today our interlocutor is the Commandant of the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, Major General, Doctor of Political Sciences Hayk Kotanjian. We are interested in his evaluation of the contradictory interpretations of the armed conflict on March 4, 2008, on the contact line of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Defense Army of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic in the vicinity of Mardakert.

The comments by the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides on the recent violation of the cease-fire in Karabakh are radically opposite. How would you comment on the recent incident on the contact line in Karabakh? The facts are as follows. In the morning of March 4, a subversive group of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, violating the cease-fire regime, occupied one of the posts of the NKR Defense Army. As a result two soldiers of the Defense Army were wounded. In connection with this fact, at the request of the Karabakh side the leadership of the RA Armed Forces informed the OSCE representative Mr. A. Kasprzhik about it, as well as with the view of immediate restoration of the status quo and the cease-fire regime. The leadership of the RA Armed Forces also tried to get into direct telephone contact with the leadership of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, while the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan informed that Minister Abiyev wasn’t able to enter upon telephone negotiations due to his business. The Armenian side, according to the warfare rules, took all the appropriate retaliatory measures, dislodged the Azerbaijani soldiers from their occupied post and restored status quo on the contact line. As a result of successful armed activities by the NKR Defense Army sub-units, the Armenian military leadership in response to the appeal of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, informed about the readiness to provide an opportunity for evacuation of the Azerbaijani soldiers’ corpses from the armed conflict territory. The validity of the given facts is known to the OSCE. The political interpretation by the Azerbaijani experts circulating in mass media is that the Armenian side has initiated the incident in order to detract the Armenian people’s attention from the state of emergency declared in Yerevan. In your opinion what is the political motive of suchlike assessment? The failed sortie by the Azerbaijani army is being actively discussed among the Baku’s governmental and public circles and individual experts in mass media, in order to impose upon the Azerbaijani and the international communities their own version of the incident. The failed attempt by the Azerbaijani army to examine the Armenian positions through an action during the hard times of restoring internal stability in Armenia is being interpreted by the Azerbaijani side from opposite perspective. The Azerbaijani side accuses the Armenians in the authorship and responsibility of this bloody adventure. Baku brings up false figures of supposedly died Armenian soldiers, underlying the fighting heroism of the Azerbaijani army. Despite the verifiable facts, this very obfuscation of facts aims at concealing the failure of the Azerbaijani bloody adventure and providing the international and expert communities with an interpretation of the incident in favour of Baku’s political interests - facing the ordeal of the forthcoming challenges of the presidential election campaign. The interpretation by the Azerbaijani side, based upon rigid falsifications of facts and exploitation of the emergency situation declared in Armenia, is an attempt to manipulate the opinions of the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples, as well as the international community, interested in maintaining peace and stability in the South Caucasus.