“There are no reasons to base peacekeepers”

Is convinced NKR National Assembly Speaker Ashot Ghulyan

 The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs called on the Karabakh conflict sides on June 9 in Yerevan “to avoid provocative actions or such statements that will create a hair-trigger situation.” “Aravot” wrote about this and at the same time expressed perplexity that statements like that were made not in Baku that was professionalized “in provocative actions and statements”, but in Yerevan. Yesterday the eighth meeting of the NKR and the RA National Assembly inter-parliamentary committee of cooperation in the RA National Assembly took place and after it ended answering questions of the journalists the NKR National Assembly Speaker Ashot Ghulyan said, “The co-chairs in their statements, if you noticed, did not mention addresses, however, probably this statement had a very concrete addressee. They address all that to those who have previously done provocative actions.”

The journalists also inquired whether the Karabakh side was satisfied with the document that had been negotiated on and whether there were any contradictions between Armenia and Karabakh around that. The NKR National Assembly Speaker reminded, “At the end of 2008 the NKR NA made a joint statement of the political forces, in which we mentioned that certainly we had reservations concerning the so called Madrid principles. However, since those were also continuously changeable documents or those elements continuously changed, it was hard to say in what condition were those that day or how they were in terms of acceptability. Certainly, that position has not changed, we retain those reservations, however we also understand that today the document that is on the negotiation table that the sides are jointly interested in, is only that one.”

Recently the idea that without participation of Karabakh no document can be signed and that Karabakh must agree on any agreement, otherwise the issue resolution will be impossible to promote has been particularly voiced. Referring to this issue and speaking of the possibility of Nagorno-Karabakh’s participation in the negotiations Ashot Ghulyan ensured that sooner or later Karabakh would participate in the negotiation process, “Not everything depends on Azerbaijan’s position and principles and as it is stipulated in the OSCE establishing documents, I think, sooner or later Karabakh will necessarily participate in the negotiation process.”

The head of the legislative power of Artsakh shared his perspective on the matter of peacekeeping forces that have been speculated on for the past few days, “I think it is a little bit early to speak of the peacekeeping forces, because they cannot be brought into the region so easily. As I remember, there are certain agreements on that, all the sides have to make a decision to agree on that, it concerns both the peacekeeping personnel and the basing places. However at least at this point there are no reasons for that.”

Let us remind that before the meeting that had to take place lately in Kazan the first to talk about the peacekeepers was the Azerbaijanis and they even mentioned the places and terms when and where those forces will be based. NKR NA Speaker Ashot Ghulyan does not have much expectaions from the expected meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on June 25 in Kazan, “It is not right to speak of possibilities, we pointed out two options; there can be an agreement, but there can also be a dead-end situation and in the case of the dead-end the discussions will continue and probably a new round of discussions will be expected especially in autumn.”

By the way, the issue of using the means of the parliamentary diplomacy was discussed yesterday in the parliament, since people are convinced both in Armenia and in Karabakh that Armenia cannot replace the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in the international organizations. The noticeable activity of NK in the negotiation process is not new for the Karabakh people, since there have been bursts of activity in the previous rounds of negotiations too, and it has also seemed many times in the past that the process is close to its end, “This time it also seems everything starts with the same round. Certainly, the bottom-line here is the statement of the co-chair country leaders that seems to clarify the future deeds, but I want to say by the general impression that at least for us the expectations of the NKR NA are not that optimistic.”