Artsakh President Sees No Peace Deal With Azerbaijan in the Foreseeable Future

STEPANAKERT – The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unlikely to be fully resolved in the foreseeable future, Artsakh president Arayik Harutiunyan said on Wednesday.

“The likelihood of resolving this problem within decades is very low,” Harutiunyan told a news conference in Stepanakert. “We don’t see that happening.”

“That is why through strengthening our army we should force the enemy to reckon with the Armenian force of Artsakh (Karabakh) and maintain the status quo until major geopolitical developments that could lead to some temporary or rather partial resolution of the Karabakh conflict,” he said. “A full resolution is not possible.”

The Karabakh leader said that the international community has already brokered such an interim solution to the conflict in Kosovo, an Albanian-populated former province of Serbia recognized as an independent state by most Western nations.

Harutiunyan spoke to reporters on the 29th anniversary of Karabakh’s declaration of independence from Soviet Azerbaijan which came just four months before the breakup of the Soviet Union and was followed by a bloody Armenian-Azerbaijani war for the territory.