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Matthew Bryza: "Armenia wants civilians to die by not providing map of mined territories"

24 April 2021 11:25 (UTC +04:00)

Armenia's attempt to present the Nakhchivan corridor as a threat to its territorial integrity stems from the country's leadership's attempts to withdraw from the November 10 agreement, former co-chair of OSCE Minsk group, former ambassador of the USA to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza told APA.

According to him, the people of Armenia, who for many years were fed up with different ideological myths and deceived during the war, are now beginning to understand the results of the war in shock and are trying to withdraw from this agreement completely.

“That is totally untrue. (Assessment of the Zangazur corridor as a threat to Armenia's territorial integrity). Armenia agreed with this in the statement dated 10 November. I was repeatedly reading about this and the tenth Article is clearly related to a corridor connecting Nakhchivan with the rest of Azerbaijan, and this is possible with the Armenian territory. The point is not that Azerbaijan will gain legal control over the corridor. The statement reads that Azerbaijan will be able to use this corridor, but that will not become Azerbaijani territory. Therefore, I interpret the statements about the corridor as a threat to Armenia's territorial integrity as an attempt by the Armenian leadership to back out of the signed statement. I think that is why President Ilham Aliyev got angry about was this. When he said that well, agreement is an agreement, we will make sure that the corridor happens one way or another, I understand this anger. You know, all of Armenia is in a political and psychological crisis, they are not able to believe that they have lost the war. For decades, they have been fed with such false ideological myths that their armies are invincible and that the Azerbaijani military cannot fight. They were also lied to during the war. Now they are beginning to understand all this in shock and are trying to get out of the November 10 statement completely. I think that should not be allowed to happen” said Bryza.

Commenting on Armenia’s not providing maps of mined areas of Azerbaijan, former ambassador noted that this behavior may be due to the fact that the angry country wants the civilian population of Azerbaijan to die in some way and it contradicts international humanitarian law.

“The international practice is that the country that laid the mines has an obligation under humanitarian and international law to provide such a map. I am not a lawyer, but, my understanding is Armenia violates international law by not providing those maps. I just can not imagine why Armenia would want to behave that way, it only makes it look like an angry country that somehow wants civilians to die in Azerbaijan. So, Armenia needs to provide that map,” he noted.