The Armenian crusade of father Grigor

Last week a group of Italian journalists, made a trip to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. On that occasion they had the chance to meet several personalities belonging to the political and civil society fields.

On 18 November the Italian newspaper Il Riformista published an article, written by Anna Mazzone. It deals with the current situation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and its implications for Armenia.

(…) We are extremely concerned about the progressive rise, both qualitative and quantitative, of violations of the ceasefire regime. The situation along the Line of Contact between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops has reached an unprecedented degree of fragility since the signing, at the Azerbaijani request, of the ceasefire agreement in ’94. The situation in the field is further aggravated by a strong war rhetoric, Armenophobia and an arms race in Azerbaijan.”, says Sargis Ghazaryan, senior fellow of EuFoA, to Il Riformista.

(…) At the end of October, days before his party’s controversial victory in the parliamentary elections, Ilham Aliyev approved a further increase of Azerbaijani military spending to about $ 3 billion – almost the total budget of Armenia for 2011. This figure, continues Ghazaryan , when combined with the absence of an international observer mission along the Line of Contact, creates fertile ground for a military escalation that could be devastating both in terms of humanitarian crisis and for the security and stability of the entire region. It is high time for a commitment from the international community, first and foremost the OSCE and the EU, in order to prevent such destabilizing moves by Azerbaijan both in political and military terms.

To download the pdf version of this article, please click here.

To visit the website of Il Riformista, please click here.