Karabakh-Azerbaijan border

YEREVAN (ArmRadio)—Azerbaijan wants to launch a construction project in the Ota Gerbend village in Aghdam to build a 700-metes-long wall along the border with the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from Karavand to Tartar region.

Former Foreign Minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Armen Melikyan called this another propaganda tactic by Azerbaijan to distract the international community.

“They spend huge sums on propaganda, and some people benefit from this,” said Malikyan. “They are following the example of Israel, which tried to demarcate its border with Palestinian settlements by building a wall. It also served its propaganda purposes to demonstrate how endangered Israelis are.”

In response, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Army officials said that Karabakh was ready to assist in the construction of the wall.

“The issue is not only to the three-meter-long sector, but also the entire line of contact for both to be protected from each other,” Melikyan said.

“It would be less expensive for Azerbaijan to pull its snipers back from the line of contact. However, they do not do this despite calls from the OSCE Minsk Group. The bottom line is, if they want to spend their oil-dollars on the construction of the wall, let them do it,” added Melikyan.

Karabakh presidential spokesman David Babayan said: “the construction of the wall is welcome in some sense, since it will define the border of Nagorno Karabakh.”

“I don’t rule out that it might be constructed for military purposes. I’m confident they will not build it all along the line of contact, since it will determine the border of Nagorno Karabakh Republic,” said Parliament member Lernik Aleksanyan.

Meanwhile, the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said that “it is possible to build a wall, but neither the Great Wall of China, nor the Berlin Wall could stand the test of time.”