For many years Armenian Deputy FM Shavarsh Kocharyan has been famous for his odd and sometimes awkward statements on processes around Karabakh.

However, it is especially odd that the diplomat of one country constantly distorts the statements of the diplomatic agencies and international institutions of other countries.

Kocharyan repeatedly started to look for a hidden meaning of the words, pronounced by someone, to please the inner audience.

Thus, in May of this year Kocharyan decided to analyze the statement of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which, in fact, did not contain any positive message for Armenia.

Also the Armenian Deputy FM sometime descends to ‘explain’ the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group and its co-chairs, in separate, to his compatriots. 

Kocharyan has recently decided to decode the protocol statement of the Iranian president to persuade the Armenian public that Armenia is not a rogue state, but an important international actor. 

Commenting on the Iranian president’s statement that the Karabakh conflict can be resolved only peacefully (it was just a simple protocol statement), Shavarsh Kocharyan said that Iran and Georgia are obviously not interested in resumption of hostilities in the region. 

 “This is their stance. Azerbaijan can take it as a message, and we as a confirmation of the already known position,” he said. 

It is unclear what message should Azerbaijan take. Even without Kocharyan’s recommendation, Baku knows that no one in the region, except for Armenia, wants the resumption of war. It is Yerevan that needs to understand that the occupation of alien lands will inevitably lead to the next escalation of tensions that will gradually grow into a full-pledged war with the involvement of all regional players. 

And any of them will hardly take the aggressor’s side. The absolute political vacuum formed around Armenia after the April escalation of 2016 on the confrontation line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh region is the best proof that no one would want to engage with Yerevan in order not to get the ‘name’ of a supporter of an occupant-country. 

When did Shavarsh Kocharyan become spokesman for the Iranian President and official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry?     

News.Az