The cycle narrows down

Vladimir Karapetyan is concerned that the international pressure in the NKR issue has increased

 Yesterday, at the assembly of G8 in the French city of Deauville the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, the French president Nicola Sarkozy and the president of the US Barack Obama adopted a joint statement on settling the Karabakh issue. In the document, the presidents called upon the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia “to prepare the population for peace, not for war” and “Show political will and end their work on the basic principles during the upcoming Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in June. Further delay will call in question the parties’ commitment to the agreements,” is said in the joint statement of the three presidents, according to “ITAR-TASS”. The presidents also added, “When an agreement is reached, we are ready to prove these principles and contribute to working out a peace agreement, and then to uphold its implementation jointly with our international partners.” Then they added, “We confirm that only the talks can lead to peace, stability and reconciliation by opening the opportunities for regional development and cooperation. We are convinced that it was time for all parties involved in the conflict to take a step towards peaceful settlement.” This is the third statement adopted by the three presidents. The previous statements were adopted on June 10 2009 in L’Aquila and on June 26 2010 in Muskoka. By the Deauville statement the presidents, actually, reaffirm the main principles. Let us remind that particularly in Muskoka “the return of the occupied territories” principle was asserted. Drawing parallels between three statements yesterday during a conversation with “Aravot” the member of the ANC commission of external relations Vladimir Karapetyan expressed concerns that the pressure of the international community on the sides has increased, “This is unprecedented, because concrete terms are mentioned.” Commenting on third statement of the three presidents Vladimir Karapetyan described it as “a very important document”. According to our interlocutor, we deal for the first time with a very clear position on the region of the presidents of the three most influential countries that is expressed in the call for adopting during the forthcoming meeting the document that exists at the negotiations on NKR issue. Considering the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RA Edward Nalbandian’s idea, expressed in the parliament yesterday that Azerbaijan has not agreed on the claim of the Armenian side that the status of the NKR must be decided by the people of their own free will that must also have a legal force, which is “the nail” of the present document, Vladimir Karapetyan is confused how can the sides agree on the whole document? “Moreover, as opposed to the 1997 step-by-step document that was stipulated to be signed by three sides, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the NKR that Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on and where there was a guarantee that at the negotiations on the future status, Karabakh as a side enjoying full rights signing that document would participate in the negotiation after that and would defend our position along with Armenia; there is no Karabakh in this document. Therefore, if that point is not defined at least as Nalbandian put it yesterday, it is impossible that it will occur to somebody to sign this. In this respect, the actually increasing pressure of the international community on the sides raises concerns. Particularly, on the Armenian side to sign the document on the table”, said Vladimir Karapetyan. He assured that this document has a lot of other dangerous and vulnerable points too, on which Mr. Karapetyan did not want to reflect yet. Our interlocutor is sure that in order the interests of the Armenian side to be defended the clarification of the NKR status issue has no alternative.