Every time when the President of Armenia (not only Serzh Sargsyan but also the first and the second presidents) are going to meet with the President of Azerbaijan, a part of our society begins expressing doubts, “he is going to hand over a land.” In the past, this assumption was having a “networking” character and was not “branching”. Now everything is “networking,” including such doubts.
The “branching” is as follows: as Serzh Sargsyan left for St. Petersburg to “handover 5 regions,” but Zhirayr Sefilyan is against it, for which he was arrested. Well, followed by this logic, I should have been also arrested because I am also against it, so as the 99.99 percent of the population of Armenia. You would say that Zhirayr Sefilyan is more dangerous than the rest of the Armenians because he is organizing rallies. But 40-50 people are gathered in these rallies, so hardly his political activities represent a danger for the RA authorities. Let me emphasize that I am not discussing here the truth or false accusations brought against the Karabakh war veteran, I am talking about the “branching of the theme.”
And the theme is the “handover of the land”. The Presidents of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan, as well as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, say that the fulfillment of the Vienna agreements was on the agenda, in other words, the establishment of mechanisms recording the ceasefire regime violations. It’s true, prior to the meeting, Aliyev was saying that Armenians must leave the “occupied territories” but he was always saying so, but he was not even saying that this problem was to be discussed in St. Petersburg. Another question of whether the mechanisms offered by the OSCE are going to operate (I highly doubt) and whether Azerbaijan is not getting ready for a new attack (I’m sure that it is getting ready). But it has nothing to do with the presumption of “ceding 5 regions.”
No president of Armenia (or in the future, prime minister) can agree to such a plan for many reasons. But the first reason is that these are not just “regions” but a territory of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, and no citizen of Armenia, including the President, can “donate” this territory to another state. If it occurs to the mind of anyone, then, anyway, his consent will have a zero importance.
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As to why the Artsakh selected representatives do not participate in the talks, here, the current and previous powers have a lot of places to be criticized.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
