Aravot’s interview with historian and former diplomat Jirair Libaridian, who was also the special envoy of former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian in the Artsakh conflict negotiations. He is also one of the authors of a White Paper, “The Karabakh War of 2020 and Armenia’s Future Foreign and Security Policies,” released recently. For the purposes of our discussion, we isolated some issues from that report, both from the conclusions of the authors and from the positions of the participating experts.
[Excerpts from the interview]
– The report repeats the thesis that “in order to understand and evaluate the policies of Azerbaijan and Turkey it is desirable to open a direct line of communication with them, preferably in a confidential manner.” With Turkey the Armenian government is undertaking such a step very openly, although not directly, through Georgia. Is this what you have in mind or do you have any additional thoughts on this?
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– Well, in general, there is a desire to start discussions with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. First, my concern is that any discussion should be well prepared. In other words, the agendas should be clarified; the parties should see where the difficulties are; they should see if some of the issues can be resolved, for example, even before any meetings between the presidents or the prime minister. And second, we must present ourselves in such meetings with positions that are based on reality. In other words, we should not try to solve problems that cannot be solved, we should not try to offer solutions that we have been trying for 30 years and have not succeeded, but we should go after what is possible and what we need. That was our misfortune before the war. Instead of pursuing what we needed, we pursued what we wished for. And now that is the issue. My concern is that we should be well prepared, and secondly, that our side should present itself with realistic approaches.
– Referring to the circumstances under which Artsakh was left out of the negotiating process, and trying to deny that that happened during the time of Robert Kocharyan, the latter stated that Artsakh was left out after the Lisbon summit in 1996, and from 1995, when Jirair Libaridian and Vafa Guluzade started meeting separately. By the way, Kocharyan said, “In my opinion, the negotiators from the Armenian side did not believe that Karabakh could be recognized as an independent state at all. I have discussed that issue with Jirair Libaridian many times. He is a man of great intellect, no doubt, but I saw that he did not believe that we could achieve our stated goals. He just did not believe it. This is how the format has been essentially eliminated.”
– Is the solution of a political issue a matter of faith? Faith has to do with religion. Political realities have nothing to do with faith. I would very much like to see Karabakh independent. I would like Western Armenia to be part of Armenia. I would like many things. But I, as a statesman, I have no right to proceed on the basis of beliefs. You can believe that there is heaven, that St. Peter has a gate through which you enter; with faith you can believe in hell, you can believe in angels. But a statesman has no right to act on faith. Yes, I did not see that there was the possibility to have the international community recognize the independence of Karabakh. There is no question of faith here.
And I regret to say, that important segments of what Mr. Kocharyan remembers are faulty. I am a historian, I have notes from meetings and I do not want to get into that issue at this time. I can only say that important segments of what he remembers reflect what happened. The main point is that I do not connect our political future with faith.
– Do you dispute his assertion as to whose fault it was that Artsakh was left out of negotiations?
– Of course, I dispute that as well. Let me ask a question: If Arkady Ghukasyan and Robert Kocharyan thought that Karabakh was left out because of my conversations with Guluzade, and Kocharyan claims that we spoke every month, why did they never ask me to end those conversations or ask that they join in the talks too? Why didn’t they say anything? That question must be answered.
The interview was conducted by Anna Israyelyan
Full interview in the video.
