Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been negotiating the peace agenda for more than 2 years, accuse each other of arming themselves and acquiring large quantities of ammunition.
Reacting to the accusations against Yerevan regularly coming from Baku, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in a recent press conference, referring to the data obtained through intelligence, presented several facts, asserting that while accusing the West of arming Armenia, Azerbaijan itself acquires weapons from a number of Western countries.
“They say that the European Union and the West are arming Armenia, Azerbaijan is acquiring weapons from Slovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Italy. Why can Azerbaijan get weapons from Italy, Armenia can’t get them from France? At least three EU member states have military-technical cooperation with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan acquires a huge amount of weapons from Israel, Azerbaijan acquires weapons from, for example, Pakistan. Why can Azerbaijan get weapons from Pakistan, Armenia can’t get weapons from India? We don’t speak about these data every day, but we know all these data, we get them through intelligence methods,” said Prime Minister Pashinyan.
In order to show that Armenia does not have “any aggressive goals”, Pashinyan assured that they do not even have the problem of returning the territories occupied by Azerbaijan to Armenia by military means, neither today nor tomorrow.
“You, including the opposition, criticize us because of the fact that more than 200 square kilometers of the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia are occupied and the Armenian government does not take measures to return those occupied territories. Those territories, the territory of the Republic of Armenia of 29,743 square kilometers, are not subject to negotiation at all. But on the other hand, today and tomorrow, the next day, we have no problem at all to restore our sovereignty over those territories by military means. Why, because we consider that the agreements and principles that have already been adopted provide an opportunity for us to solve our problems in a peaceful way, including the process of border delimitation, exclusively in a peaceful way, through negotiations,” the Prime Minister emphasized.
Despite these assurances and peace-loving messages of Pashinyan, a harsh reaction from Baku was not long in coming. Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev of Armenia from the Prime Minister’s press conference immediately afterwards he spoke about the need to limit Armenia’s military capabilities and armed forces. This is despite the fact that, as the Prime Minister of Armenia mentioned, Azerbaijan’s military expenses make up 17 percent of the gross output of the economy, while in the case of Armenia it is only 4-5 percent.
“How fair is it to blame Armenia in the conditions when we constantly hear threats,” Pashinyan said.
