ANM administration and “Alternative” member Erjanik Abgaryan says.
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan declared in “Regnum” agency on March 21 that Armenia had serious achievements in the negotiations of NK conflict settlement: “We’d dream of such formulations in 1996. Each document about the conflict settlement was started with the thesis of territorial integrity till 1998, the rest was produced only in that context. All this was changed after 1998. Step by step we reached to the right of NK people’s self-determination, with the help of referendum.” The version, which is discussed now, hasn’t been declassified yet. But Armenia published the proposals published by the Minsk Group in February 2001. And the content of the proposal called “general state” makes us cast doubt on Mr. Oskanian’s affirmation as if the situation has been changed since 1998.
Erjanik Abgaryan quoted from the published documents during our interview. First of all he told about the so-called “phase” version: “The proposal consisted of two agreements, and NK status was mentioned as the part of Azerbaijan in the introduction of the second agreement”. In Erjanik Abgaryan’s opinion, there is no formulation in the draft of “phase” version produced in December 1997, or rather in the draft “About stopping the NK armed conflict”. “The issues of the corridor and roads were settled in the draft. And the following was written about the status that three parties /pay attention three and not two/ stop the military aspect of the conflict and agree to continue the negotiations with the Minsk Group’s co-chaired countries, in accordance with OSCE acting chairman’s invitations to come to an agreement about the general settlement of the conflict, including the political settlement, which includes NK status, settlement of Lachin, Shushi and Shahumyan problems”. This means that the problem of status is still unsettled, though the Foreign Minister affirms that even that document started with the thesis of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
Anyway, was this changed after 1998? The proposal “About the principles of entire settlement of the NK armed conflict” was produced in November, 1998. It is written in this proposal that “Nagorno Karabakh is a state territorial union in republic form, and forms with Azerbaijan a general state within the internationally recognized borders. Thus, Mr. Oskanyan isn’t so sincere as no step was taken for the settlement of NK conflict and right of self-determination in this proposal”.
Mr. Abgaryan also added: “Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s political team has never had dreamily attitudes towards the policy. We took the former authorities’ way of action, facts and capacities into consideration and adopted internationally proved way of action. The authority carries out imitation policy in Karabakh and foreign political issues in general for about 10 years. – They don’t want to settle the NK conflict but show that they negotiate. They aren’t capable to settle that conflict or they obey the foreign rulers so much that they aren’t able to make any decision when the foreign countries say “no”.
The Foreign Minister makes declarations from time to time, which also cast some doubts. For instance, Mr. Oskanyan declared in the parliament: “ Nowadays the fact of not being the part of Azerbaijan is real for Nagorno Karabakh, and the international community has normal attitudes”. This affirmation wasn’t adopted in the last three years, and the ANM administration member says: “It is surprising when our Foreign Ministers chooses this way of making irresponsible declarations. The Foreign Minister must express his opinion based on the cold facts. The representatives of western countries were also telling us, what a good success you attained in Lachin or Kelbajar, but they were recording other things in the documents. We have never declared about it. It isn’t a way of action. The state official must base on dry facts”.