During the founding session of the Gyumri regional organization of “Consolidation” political party, Vartan Oskanian, addressing the Karabakh conflict in his speech, reminded that peace was maintained during his tenure as foreign minister. After the session, Aravot.am asked the former foreign minister about the flaws that our diplomats have allowed, Edward Nalbandian’s headed ministry that became a cause of a war. “During my tenure, there were really successes and one of the reasons was the implementation of complementary policies. For the Karabakh process, when the negotiations have reached an impasse, I consider taking the initiative as the most important thing because the negotiations should never be left in the impasse for a long time. It is very dangerous, peace was always maintained for two reasons: a hope to resolve the issue thru negotiations, secondly, a military balance in the frontier. Today, these two were violated prior to the four-day war. The negotiations are at an impasse for two years and the military balance was definitely violated in favor of Azerbaijan, if not in reality, at least in perception. Hence, the combination of these two – the state of the impasse of the negotiations, violation of the military balance even though in perception, these two led to the war, and it was very natural that it should be so. Now, why are the negotiations in an impasse? Certainly, this question can be raised, it is a lack of initiative, something wrong has taken place that this process has been so neglected. You know, at this point, I would not like to give assessments, I am just stating the fact that the negotiations were at an impasse. One of the reasons for our success is that peace is maintained and it was the consistent maintenance of my two aforementioned, negotiation always existed and has entered an impasse very quickly, we have taken an initiative with a new proposal, we have brought to a new dimension, on the other hand, we have worked with Russia and other countries in order to maintain this military balance. You know that it began to break after 2012, after the great Russian-Azerbaijani military agreement, until then we had managed not to allow signing such an agreement and had managed to keep this military balance. Hence, these two factors are indeed very important. Indeed, peace was preserved not only for ten years but along with maintaining peace, the right to self-determination of the Nagorno Karabakh people was enshrined in the negotiating document for the first time. This is a significant improvement, a diplomatic one, and everything should be done to preserve it, and I hope that it is still in the document. Just observing and recently listening to different interpretations, statements at the highest level, I feel that it is also violated and today, the emphasis is not on the self-determination but generally the territories, which I think is not a favorable option for the Armenia.”
To our question of whether the diplomats have a task to do at this point, or the only way of solving the issue remains war, Vartan Oskanian said, “Of course, they have. It is necessary to the earliest take the negotiations out of the impasse. Do you remember when the president himself was putting preconditions to negotiations, I was one of the main critics who said that you should not do it, on the contrary, we must have initiated to take the negotiations out if the impasse but at the same time, we must take the initiative. In the process of coming out of the impasse, when they come up with initiatives, we will have something to say there and will be able to affix our vision there for when it is an impasse and you do not take the initiative, others will take your initiative, what you want is never put there and it could be to the detriment of Armenia. Hence, the effort to bring the negotiations out from the impasse should be combined with taking the initiative, only by the combining of the two we can succeed,” – said the former foreign minister.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
