News - Armenia ruling power MP: The task is not to bring Azerbaijan to Western platform but to constructive field

The task is not to bring Azerbaijan to the Western platform, but to bring it to a constructive field. Sargis Khandanyan, an MP of the ruling majority Civil Contract Faction and Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, told about this to reporters at the NA Wednesday—and referring to the current negotiations between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Berlin, Germany. "If our partners manage to bring Azerbaijan into a constructive field and ultimately reach the moment when it will be possible to sign the peace treaty, then it can be a good sign," Khandanyan emphasized. Reflecting on Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev's statements that if Armenia wants to sign a peace treaty, it must fulfill all of Azerbaijan’s demands, and responding to a reporter's question as to whether this makes the situation even more tense, Khandanyan said: "Those statements are unacceptable. Azerbaijan's attempts to meddle in Armenia's internal affairs, as well as the attempts to posit additional demands, are also unacceptable because one thing is clear that the framework of principles for the normalization of relations and the signing of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been agreed upon, and relations should be normalized and agreements should be reached within their framework. And indeed, that rhetoric does not speak of constructiveness." And commenting on the fact that during the "interruption" phase of the negotiations, Azerbaijan presented demands to Armenia, and responding to the question as to whether these demands were included in the draft peace treaty, Khandanyan stated: "In our editions of the peace treaty, the entire content is built on the basis of the three principles agreed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan is attempting to take a step back from those principles, and by changing certain details to violate the logic of those principles. But, nonetheless, our claim is that it should be signed on the basis of those three principles and the text should be drawn up within those frameworks.