Documents signed by Heydar Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, as well as Safar Abiyev, the Azeri Defense Minister, by which they recognized the independence of the NKR as far back as in 1993, are available to the whole world now. Political scientist Gagik Hambaryan, citing these documents, states that in 1993, high-ranking Azeri officials sent different requests to the NKR leadership at the very same time when their army was in a catastrophic condition on the battlefield. In one of those documents dated August 7, 1993, Heydar Aliyev, the acting President of Azerbaijan and the chairman of the Azeri Supreme Council, authorizes Rasul Guliyev, the Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, with his own signature and a letterhead of the president’s chief of staff to organize a meeting between the high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan and the NKR. “It is written in documents with similar content signed by Heydar Aliyev and dated August 31 and September 3, 1993, that the latter permits Afiyaddin Jalilov, the deputy chairman of the Azeri Supreme Council, to engage in negotiations with the NKR on behalf of Azerbaijan. And this means that the Azeri government recognized the de jure and de facto existence of the NKR at that time,” the political scientist says.
Let us also note that before Aliyev’s official notes, Safar Abiyev, the Azeri Defense Minister, had also been engaged in active negotiations with the NKR high-ranking officials. On June 25, 1993, two days after Aghdam, an important strategic outpost of Azerbaijan, had been conquered, the latter made an official request to Samvel Babayan, the NKR Defense Minister, asking to cease military operations for 3 days. “I am asking now: ‘If the Azeri Defense Minister sends a letter-request for a ceasefire, what is it, if not a document on de jure recognition of the NKR’s independence by Azerbaijan?’ Let me also note that on July 28, 1993, another agreement was signed between Azerbaijan and the NKR to extend the ceasefire for 7 more days, during which a meeting between the high-ranking officials of the NKR and Azerbaijan was to be organized. Safar Abiyev, the acting Defense Minister of Azerbaijan, and Serzh Sargsyan, the Defense Minister of the NKR, signed this document. Let us add that on the ceasefire agreement dated May 11, 1994, which has been in force up to now and entered into force on the following day, May 12, 1994, there is the signature of the NKR next to the signatures of Azerbaijan and Armenia,” Gagik Hambaryan asserts. The political scientist states that his source is open and the documents that he has at hand are also included in the book “Peace to Karabakh” written by Vladimir Kazimirov, a famous diplomat and a former Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group, and published in 2009. “I am just surprised that the Armenian government paid no attention whatsoever to this fact and doesn’t present the fact that Azerbaijan recognized the independence of the NKR in the summer of 1993 to the whole world. It would be very good, if our Armenian side responded to the Azeris using these arguments. By the way, let me say that the Azeris accept these facts very reluctantly and most of the time state without any proof whatsoever that all these documents are faked and falsified by the Armenians. But I think that if Vladimir Kazimirov has these documents, our foreign ministry and the Russian foreign ministry have them too; therefore, it is a matter of minutes to prove their genuineness. Those documents are weighty proofs in struggle against Azeri lies,” Gagik Hambaryan says. All the documents are available on www.aravot.am.
NUNE AREVSHATYAN
