Opposition chides Armenian leadership for foreign policy failures

Arminfo
23 Nov 04

Yerevan, 23 November: The current Armenian leadership has brought
the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict to deadlock and
has endangered the possibility of a pro-Armenian solution to this
problem, representatives of the Armenian opposition said at the
Armenian National Assembly today.

The vice-president of the National Unity Party, Aleksan Karapetyan,
said that the draft resolution of the rapporteur of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] on Nagornyy Karabakh, David
Atkinson, which runs counter to the interests of the Armenian side,
is a result of the “good-for-nothing” foreign policy of the country’s
incumbent authorities.

Aleksan Karapetyan, a member of the Armenian delegation at the NATO
Parliamentary Assembly, said that having familiarized himself with the
agenda of the Rose-Roth seminar to be held in Baku on 25-27 November,
it became clear that Armenia is not ready to take part in this
seminar. He said that as a consequence of the short-sighted foreign
policy of the country’s incumbent authorities, Nagornyy Karabakh has
turned out of a member of the negotiating process into its object.

For his part, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party and former
presidential adviser for foreign issues, Aram Sarkisyan, also accused
the country’s leadership of allowing Azerbaijan to include the issue of
“the occupied territories” in the agenda of the UN General Assembly.

He said that the best thing the Armenian side can count on during
the discussion of this issue at the UN General Assembly is the
establishment of a monitoring group to study “the situation on the
occupied territories”.

The MP stated that [Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan must report
“foreign policy failures” to the people and parliament. Aram Sarkisyan
said that the opposition will organize a round table at the house of
journalists on 26 November on the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh
conflict. During the discussions, the opposition will present a plan
of measures to get out of the current critical situation. At the
same time, he expressed the hope that under the current authorities,
it will be difficult to get the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh
conflict out of the deadlock.