AZERI OFFICIAL CONDEMNS ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER’S KARABAKH REMARKS

Turan news agency
14 Oct 04

Baku, 14 October: Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan should put
an end to inventions about the Key West meeting between (Azerbaijani
ex-President) Heydar Aliyev and (Armenian President) Robert Kocharyan,
Matin Mirza, press secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry,
said while commenting on Oskanyan’s recent appearance on Armenian
television.

The Armenian minister is “obscuring” the negotiations with insistence
that deserves better use, saying that an agreement was reached in Key
West that Karabakh will not be part of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani
side suggests once again that Oskanyan put an end to “games” around
Key West where “no agreements were reached”. Baku regards Oskanyan’s
statements as an attempt to undermine trust in Azerbaijan and present
it as a country that does not fulfil its commitments.

In this connection, the Azerbaijani side recalls that Heydar Aliyev
and President (Levon) Ter-Petrosyan reached an agreement on a
stage-by-stage solution to the Karabakh conflict in Strasbourg on
10 October 1997. However, Armenia’s “militarist circles” overthrew
Ter-Petrosyan (in 1998) and successfully “buried” the agreement that
had been reached.

Moreover, President Robert Kocharyan had given his “principled
consent” to the settlement option that envisaged “the handover of
part of Armenian territory to Azerbaijan”. However, this was followed
by an unexpected shooting in the Armenian parliament, and Kocharyan
deviated from this agreement “under the pretext” of the complicated
internal political situation. These facts testify that it is exactly
the Armenian side that breaks the reached agreements.

The comment points out that the Azerbaijani side will not allow
international law to be revised and “will not cede even an inch of
its land”. The territory of Nagornyy Karabakh “cannot be a subject of
a compromise” and is an “integral” part of Azerbaijan. A subject of a
compromise can be the status of this region which could be determined
in view of European experience of self-government.

The Azerbaijani side thinks that Oskanyan’s statements are caused by
“personal and domestic political motives”. All this could be directed
at disrupting the progress that was made at the Prague meetings.