Baku, May 10, AZERTAC

Israeli The Jerusalem Post newspaper has published a comment by director of international communications for a leading Israeli think tank Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman in response to Armenian MP, former prime minister Hrant Bagratyan`s urging his country`s government to create nuclear weapons to prevent Azerbaijan`s and Turkey`s “further attacks and aggressions”.

Jaffe-Hoffman notes that the world should not be so eager to let such comments slip.

“On April 18, just days before Bagratyan`s statements, the Georgian State Security Service arrested three Armenian nationals and three citizens of Georgia for attempting to illegally sell roughly $200 million of weapons-grade uranium 238. This recent arrest was not the first. Arrests of Armenians who have crossed into neighboring Georgia have increased in the past two years. Landlocked Armenians use Georgia for access to the Black Sea ports, which could be used to traffic nuclear material to the Middle East or anywhere else.”

Touching upon the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Jaffe-Hoffman says: “Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia started more than 30 years ago, in the late 1980s. It escalated into a full-fledged war in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. More than 30,000 people were killed before a cease-fire was instituted in 1994. Since then, sporadic, unenthusiastic and ineffective efforts have been made by the Minsk Group – co-chaired by France, the Russian Federation and the United States – to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”

“Battles have erupted periodically between the two sides, most recently in early April when Armenian positions fired intensive artillery barrages at nearby Azerbaijani positions and residential areas.

The UN Security Council has recognized Azerbaijan`s right to this territory with Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884, among others. Armenia has continued to ignore the resolutions,” Jaffe-Hoffman adds.