Nagorno-Karabakh

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, we support the role that the US is playing in the Minsk process; I mentioned before the strong statements from the President and the Secretary of State on this issue. We believe that the Minsk process is the best way to bring about an end to this conflict. The role of that group is to facilitate the negotiations—as I said, it has proposed a set of basic principles—but it is for the parties themselves to negotiate a peace agreement. We recognise that that must involve compromise and hard choices, but there is no military solution. We need the parties to return to the negotiation table, with the help of the co-chairs—the US, France and Moscow—and we believe that that is the best way to bring about an end to this conflict.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, would the Minister agree that this is a conflict which has a long history, where everybody blames everybody else and everybody blames the backers of their enemy? Could the Government put as much pressure on as possible to allow journalists in, so that the rest of the world knows what is going on? We could do without propaganda from both sides clogging our view.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that the roots of this conflict are complex and predate the collapse of the Soviet Union. Apportioning blame is not the solution. I also completely agree about the importance of media freedom. We are concerned about disinformation in this conflict, and we are concerned about reports of lack of access to the internet. We will do all we can to facilitate access to the region so that we can understand what is happening.