On December 7, Edward Nalbandian, Foreign Minister of Armenia participated and delivered remarks at the 24th session of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna, which was attended by high-level delegations from 57 member states, 11 partner countries and a number of international organizations.

In his remarks, Minister Nalbandian touched upon the urgent issues of the OSCE agenda, positively assessing the fact that the theme of protection of ethnic and religious groups from identity based violence and atrocities especially in our neighboring region – in the Middle East, is getting more and more attention within the OSCE.

Edward Nalbandian presented the latest developments in Armenia-EU relations: “About two weeks ago Armenia signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It vividly demonstrated that the membership to one integration framework, in the case of Armenia to the Eurasian Economic Union, does not preclude cooperation with the others. We hope that pragmatic and result oriented dialogue will be the driving force of the economic cooperation in the whole OSCE area”, said the Minister.

Foreign Minister talked about the negative consequences of the closure of the OSCE Office in Yerevan, noting that after failing to respect the OSCE commitments and eliminating the OSCE Office in its own country, it attacked and closed the last OSCE full-fledged mission in the region. “It is particularly deplorable that the Office was closed against the will and consistent efforts for its preservation exerted by the host country and all participating States with one exception - Azerbaijan. We would like to recall that both German and Austrian Chairmanships rejected the accusations of Azerbaijan against Yerevan Office. It does not come as a surprise that Azerbaijan found itself in isolation in challenging the OSCE Office in Yerevan,” emphasized Edward Nalbandian.

The main focus of Minister Nalbandian's remarks at the OSCE Ministerial Council were the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries aimed at the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Azerbaijan's actions towards backtracking from the agreements and maintaining the status quo.

According to Minister Nalbandian, Azerbaijan’s intentions can be easily tracked by its expenditures: Baku spends billions to buy influence in the world capitals, as once again became obvious through notorious “Laundromat” affair, it spends much more for purchases of advanced weaponry, but it has not invested anything so far to prepare its population for peace, as the Co-Chairs have been continuously urging.

“Azerbaijan’s uncompromising and maximalist stance has become a serious obstacle to the advancement of the peace process and has heavily contributed to the preservation of the status-quo. The Co-Chairs’ conflict settlement proposals are a way that could bring to the change of the status-quo. However, Azerbaijan rejects those proposals, doing everything to keep the status-quo intact at the same time claiming that allegedly it is advocating for the change of status-quo,” stressed Edward Nalbandian.