If Azerbaijan were to start war to regain its territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, this would be an internal matter for Azerbaijan.
This is the view of Murat Laumulin, a senior fellow at the Kazakh president's Strategic Research Institute.
“If a military conflict began in Nagorno-Karabakh, this would not be an attack by Azerbaijan on Armenia”, Laumulin said. "This issue is Azerbaijan’s internal affair, because Nagorno-Karabakh is a part of Azerbaijan’s administrative territory.”
He was pouring cold water on remarks by Armenian Defence Minister Seyran Ohanyan last week that in the event of war in Karabakh, Armenia could rely on its partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization for support.
The director for analysis and consulting at Kazakhstan’s Institute of Political Solutions, Rustam Burnashev, shares Laumulin's view.
He said that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict was an internal Azerbaijani affair: “What's most important is how much Armenia itself would raise this issue and how much Azerbaijan would bring it before the international community."
"The interpretation of the Karabakh conflict by Azerbaijan and Armenia does not envisage a direct clash between them," Burnashev said.
Seyran Ohanyan made the remarks about CSTO support in the event of war in Karabakh at a conference in Yerevan entitled "CSTO and the South Caucasus: prospects for peace and security in the region".
The members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization are Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
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