“The Village Council records up to the UN records show” that Kocharyan has ousted the Nagorno-Karabakh from the settlement process
Recently, a notable incident occurred in the political arena. After Ter-Petrosyan’s declared “political analysis” and “bourgeois-democratic revolution,” ANC somehow bypassed the subject of Kocharyan’s criticism, obviously took a break in his once tactics of keeping the matter of his role on March 1 issue heated. Even it comes to the point that on one occasion Levon Zurabyan alarmed about the risk of loss of Kocharyan’s property stating the following, in case of being re-elected in 2013, Serzh Sargsyan would be his best to expel major economic and financial capacity possessing Gagik Tsarukyan and Robert Kocharyan from the political arena. “Whoever is the head of the power, he possesses the property. Therefore, the person who loses the power loses of property too.”
On March 4, Kocharyan’s press secretary issued a clarification, which stated that Kocharyan put a full stop to the ceasefire existing between Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan. The motive of Kocharyan’s spokesman’s issued article was Ter-Petrosyan’s speech on March 1, in which he specifically said, “At the same time, the Kocharyan administration allowed a more serious failure in the foreign policy. Before that, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic being a full member of the conflict was expelled from the settlement process, and the right to self-determination of the people of Artsakh turned into a subject of the Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial dispute”.
It is noteworthy that in the March 1 rally, Ter-Petrosyan again evaded the issue of Kocharyan’s responsibility for March 1, probably sending a message to Kocharyan with the expectation of becoming allies with Kocharyan after expelling Tsarukyan from the political processes. While Kocharyan, three days later after this speech, countered that Levon Ter-Petrosyan has ousted Nagorno-Karabakh from the negotiations, actually denying Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s expectations. Basically, this subject was just an excuse for Kocharyan to emphasize his denying attitude towards Ter-Petrosyan. As for the “achievements” of Kocharyan and Oskanyan in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process in 1998-2008, it really is not a subject for discussion, because as said in the famous work of the famous writer, “the village council records up to the United Nations records show” that Nagorno-Karabakh was ousted from the peace process during the years of their tenure. And it is an irrefutable reality.
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Recall that in 1998, Kocharyan promised to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in package, in a “winning” way, and had promised to establish an independent Nagorno-Karabakh on the territory covering 8 thousand square kilometers, to the point, without introducing this issue into the referendum and involving the Karabakh into the negotiation process. But, later, it turned out that Kocharyan and Oskanyan are even supporters for the Nagorno-Karabakh to be annexed as a part of Azerbaijan as they had agreed and negotiated around the offer of “Common state” acceptable for them (the version of the “Common state” suggested during Kocharyan’s tenure was published in the press in 1998). To the point, this offer was submitted to the Nagorno-Karabakh, and Stepanakert has also accepted it. After that, Kocharyan entered into the talks of exchange of territories.
In 1999, Kocharyan signed the Charter for European Security at the OSCE summit in Istanbul and recognized the primacy of the principle of territorial integrity, and generally, after the 1998 change of government, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict came out of the sphere of the right to self-determination of the nations and turned into a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is not all. One of the “achievements” during the tenure of Kocharyan and Oskanyan was the discussion of the idea for setting up a corridor that links Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan though Meghri, this topic is widely discussed in the Armenian press under the name “Meghri’s option”. The matter is about the talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement in the city of Key West, Florida, USA, on April 3-7, 2001, where, according to circulated information, the question of Meghri was raised, the issue of providing a corridor to Azerbaijan through Meghri was on the table.
The round of Key West talks was held under the auspices of the US Secretary of State Colin Powell. It was then that the statements to surrender the “occupied” territories without preconditions were circulated extensively. The information following the Key West talks were as follows: there are disagreements on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh that were not squeaked through. It is known that the Key West “agreement” was planned to be signed in the same year, in summer at the summit in Geneva, but it just did not happen. “Robert Kocharyan himself expressed a wish to present both Armenia and Karabakh in the talks. At some point Nagorno-Karabakh walked out of the talks and currently both parties should give their consent to its return. The day when Karabakhi people participate in the wide-ranging talks will come. And the sooner, the better,” said the OSCE Minsk Group French co-chair Bernard Fassier repeatedly mentioning this idea, in response to the complaints of the Armenian side at the Rose-Roth Seminar of NATO Parliamentary Assembly hosted in Yerevan in 2010 that Nagorno-Karabakh nowadays does not participate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process.
It should be noted that the last Minsk Group plenary format talks were held in Helsinki in April of 1997, in participation of the three parties, after which, the co-chairs have submitted the three parties written proposals. Kocharian, after coming to power, has ousted the Nagorno-Karabakh from the talks process by his own personal decision, while not Karabakh settlement proposals were submitted after October 27, 1999. After October 27, 1999, when Kocharyan was already at the head of the sole government, no settlement suggestions were made to Nagorno-Karabakh, which unambiguously shows Kocharyan’s and Oskanyan’s consistent policy of ousting the Nagorno-Karabakh from the talks. And generally, when it comes to Nagorno-Karabakh’s participating in the negotiation process, we need to understand what is meant by involvement of the parties in the negotiation process.
First of all, this is a circumstance to present the settlement options to the parties, and here, we must remind that in 1997, the package and stage-by-stage options for the Karabakh conflict settlement were presented to Armenia, Azerbaijan as well as to Nagorno-Karabakh. One more remarkable episode. During the presidential elections campaign in 2003, everyone remembers the television dispute between the candidates for the president – the Head of the People’s Party of Armenia Stepan Demirchyan and Robert Kocharyan, during which Kocharyan, in response to Demirchyan’s following accusation addressed to him that he ousted Nagorno-Karabakh from the peace process, did not deny it, moreover, he justified the righteousness of his four-year “tactics” as follows: it is right that Armenia takes a greater commitment in the negotiation process without Karabakh. So, with regard to existing irrefutable facts, the “proof-reading” works of Kocharyan and his office, to put it mildly, are ridiculous.
Emma GABRIELYAN
