A regular Cabinet meeting took place today, during which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a speech and referred to the terrorist operation carried out by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh on March 5 and its goals.

In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan noted.

"Dear participants of the Cabinet meeting,

Dear people,

With the Lachin Corridor closed by Azerbaijan for almost three months now, we have a new escalation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. Last Sunday, a unit of the armed forces of Azerbaijan ambushed and attacked the policemen who were traveling from the capital of Nagorno Karabakh, Stepanakert to the villages of Old Shen and Mets Shen in Nagorno Karabakh in an UAZ passenger car. Three of the policemen were killed and one was injured.

Offering my condolences to the relatives and comrades of the fallen police officers, I want to emphasize that all three of them were born in Nagorno-Karabakh.

This factor gains special importance in the background of a statement made by the president of Azerbaijan at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, 2023. And the president of Azerbaijan admitted in Munich that there is an international agreement, according to which they should discuss with the representatives of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh the issue of their rights and security. However, the president of Azerbaijan emphasized that they are going to hold these discussions with the people who were born and live in Nagorno Karabakh.

On March 1, the first meeting of the representatives of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan took place at the headquarters of the peacekeeping troops of the Russian Federation in Nagorno Karabakh, and here, four days after that meeting, Azerbaijan undertook the mentioned provocation, which is difficult to call anything other than a terrorist act. Three citizens born in Nagorno-Karabakh, with families and three, two and one children in Nagorno-Karabakh fell victim to that terrorist act.

Dear attendees,

Azerbaijan is pursuing several goals with the March 5 terrorist attack. The first is the aborting further negotiations with the representatives of Nagorno Karabakh and creating the necessary background for a new military provocation. In this regard, I must emphasize that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno Karabakh made a statement yesterday, expressing readiness to continue the dialogue with Azerbaijan, and this is an extremely important statement.

I think it is necessary to create reliable international mechanisms for uninterrupted and institutional dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert, and this can become an effective guarantee for the realization of the above-mentioned international agreement.

The next goal of the March 5 provocation was to create false evidence that weapons and ammunition are being transported from Armenia to Nagorno Karabakh. This topic is important for Azerbaijan especially after the February 22 decision of the International Court of Justice, when the court unequivocally rejected Azerbaijan's request to indicate a provisional measure against Armenia, by which Azerbaijan accused Armenia of placing land mines. With that rejection, the groundless accusations against Armenia about mines, which had been on all international platforms for several months now, collapsed, and this was extremely important.

And here, Azerbaijan tried to present the incident of March 5 as proof of the transfer of weapons and ammunition from the Republic of Armenia to Nagorno Karabakh, which did not work for two reasons.

First, the UAZ of the police was not going to Stepanakert, but had left Stepanakert. And secondly, the attack of Azerbaijan and also the trajectory of the UAZ car from Stepanakert to the scene were video-recorded by the cameras of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh, which made it obvious that there was nothing else in the police car except for documents and a handgun.
The next important goal of Azerbaijan was the following: to use bloody terrorism for creating new discourses, new information flows, which will cover an important fact, that Azerbaijan is openly not fulfilling the decision of the world's highest court, the International Court of Justice, regarding the opening of the Lachin Corridor.

Let me remind that by the decision with binding legal force, the court obliged Azerbaijan to take all measures available to it to guarantee the uninterrupted movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions through the Lachin Corridor. The court emphasized that its decision creates binding legal force for Azerbaijan. And here, this decision has not been implemented for about 15 days, and this is solely the responsibility of Azerbaijan. On the contrary, Azerbaijan undertakes new provocations to further aggravate the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Emphasizing all this, it becomes more and more urgent to send an international fact-finding mission to Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor to prevent the new aggression by Azerbaijan and the obvious preparations of Azerbaijan to subject the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing and genocide, which is expressed by not fulfilling the decisions of international courts, keeping the Lachin Corridor closed, carrying out military provocations and acts of terrorism.

At the same time, I consider it necessary to reaffirm the desire of the Republic of Armenia to achieve peace in the region and the commitment to the peace agenda.

Thank you."