Alberto Rubio
“Armenia has repeatedly declared that it is ready to begin an era of peaceful development in the region,” Ambassador Sos Avetisyan said during the reception he hosted in Madrid to celebrate the Independence Day of the Republic of Armenia, referring to the conflict with Azerbaijan.
The ambassador explained that the reception should have been held on September 21 but had to be postponed because two days earlier, on September 19, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale attack on Nagorno-Karabakh.
After enumerating the continuous blockades and threats endured by the Armenian population, Sos Avetisyan drew on his status as a hispanic philologist and quoted Antonio Machado’s poem, ‘Caminante, no hay camino’, to stress that Armenia is willing to make that path to a new era in the region.
“But these efforts cannot be unilateral,” he added, “we must all be committed to negotiations.” Therefore, he said, “we expect a constructive approach and concrete steps from Azerbaijan and other actors in the region.”
Regretting that three debates in the UN Security Council on the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute “did not yield any results,” he appealed to the international community, “which has an important role and should set the practice of avoiding the use of force to resolve conflicts.”
Avetisyan thanked the European leaders for their statements in favor of a negotiated solution for Nagorno-Karabakh. He also thanked the Spanish Congress for its institutional declaration “condemning Azerbaijan’s military aggression”; the Spanish health authorities for having received wounded patients; and, in particular, the aid of one million euros that Spain will allocate, through the AECID, “to overcome the humanitarian crisis caused by the displacement of 100,000 Armenian refugees”.
He also made a complete review of the bilateral relations with Spain, of which 31 years have already passed. Among other facts, he emphasized his wish that the diplomatic ‘antenna’ that Spain has maintained in Yerevan since September last year will become “in the future” an Embassy.
Finally, he welcomed the fact that all obstacles to bilateral trade “have disappeared” and that the establishment of the Chair of Armenian Studies at the Complutense University in 2022 opens the door to expand this initiative to other universities to form a network of chairs “as an important link between our countries, which are linked by very deep historical connections”.
