The US authorities, proposing to send a peacekeeping mission from the Scandinavian countries to Nagorno-Karabakh, apparently finally imagined themselves as a “big boss” and forgot about the norms of international law and international institutions, Elena Panina, a member of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, told RIA Novosti.
Earlier, the US President’s National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien spoke about Washington’s proposal to send a Scandinavian peacekeeping mission to Karabakh. According to him, the issue is being worked out directly with these countries. At the same time, he specified that the co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group, including the United States, or neighboring countries, for example, Turkey, should not be part of any armed peacekeeping forces.
“The US authorities, apparently, have completely forgotten about the existence of the UN and other international organizations, about international law, about respect for the dignity of sovereign states. They, apparently, finally imagined themselves as a“ big boss ”on a global scale and send Scandinavians to Karabakh with this look, as if they ordered pizza or mowing the lawn, “said Panina.
In her opinion, this approach reflects a certain vision of foreign policy, “looking at it as an aggressive business process, where there is a large customer and executors lined up in line.”
In addition, Panina stressed, the US instructions on which countries, from their point of view, cannot participate in the peacekeeping process, are even more shameless.
“The very fact of such statements by US officials suggests that the White House has completely lost a sense of reality in assessing foreign policy events,” the deputy said.
The fighting on the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh began on 27 September. Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other of unleashing hostilities, in Karabakh they report shelling of settlements of the unrecognized republic, including its capital, Stepanakert. Armenia has declared martial law and – for the first time – general mobilization, claiming that Ankara is actively supporting Baku. Partial mobilization was introduced in Azerbaijan and martial law in a number of places. The leaders of Russia, the United States and France called on the opposing sides to stop clashes and to commit themselves to start negotiations without preconditions.
On October 9, the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia arrived in Moscow at the invitation of the President of the Russian Federation, together with their Russian counterpart they held talks for more than 10 hours. As a result, Yerevan and Baku agreed to cease fire in Karabakh from noon on October 10, to exchange prisoners and bodies of the dead, and also to additionally agree on specific details of the truce. However, on the same day, the parties began to accuse each other of violations of the agreement. A second attempt to organize a humanitarian truce was made on the night of 18 October. The US State Department announced the achieved humanitarian ceasefire from 7.00 Moscow time (8.00 local time) on October 26, but even after that, the parties to the conflict declared that the enemy was not observing it.