“The people of the Yeraskh community cannot make a neighborhood or friendship with their neighbor, Azerbaijan, with Nakhichevan.”
The interlocutor of “Aravot” is Saro Ayvazyan, head of the Yeraskh administrative district of the Ararat community.
– Who says we are enemies? We are in negotiations to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijanis, we want to be friends, and our government is ready to give whatever they want in return.
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– It won’t happen. How can we be friends if we have had great victims, massacres? I am 60 years old; I lived with them, they were not active, but now they are very functional because they call themselves a victorious state.
But for one thing, I don’t consider them to be winners. They want to defame us with their dirty tricks. And even today, all that – peace, reconciliation – is complicated with them.
– But the government of Armenia considers it necessary and is ready to go for it at any cost, they constantly announce.
– The government can do that, but the people of our Yeraskh community cannot make a neighborhood or friendship with their neighbor, Azerbaijan, with Nakhichevan.
– Why can’t you, let’s say now, sign a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, based on which we will become friends? What should you do?
-If it will be sealed, we will live on our side, let them live on their side, and we will not communicate; that communication will cause more sinister things.
Saro Ayvazyan considers it possible to live like that. He also left the question of enclaves and their return unfinished.
– As the head of the administrative district, I cannot address these issues. I, a participant in the war, have gone through a difficult path; I have been injured, and now I want to live in peace; let there be no war, and let God grant peace.
– But in exchange for that peace, Azerbaijan wants something constantly. Shall we give?
– Well, now, it is like that. Azerbaijan may want this factory for peace and Yeraskh; how can we give it? Who will provide it? There is no giver; many who want: a giver is needed.
– The government is ready to give.
-OK, thanks.
– And what about coexistence with Azerbaijanis? According to rumors, they want to return the Azerbaijanis who left here in the 1990s.
– It won’t happen, it won’t happen. These are just words; they will not return, and we will not want to either; even if we have lost our home there, we will not go; my homeland, my home is here; we are Armenians, we are Christians, we must live on our land. I want to feel the sweetness of my land; I don’t want anything else.
– What will be the solution to all this and where will the military escalation develop?
– The solution is this: the provocations from their side will end, and these good works will continue from our side, and the good life of the villagers will improve.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
“Aravot” daily, 16.06.2023
