Armenia willing to be flexible on Nagorno-Karabakh

Interfax
Dec 23 2004

Yerevan. (Interfax) – Armenia is willing to be flexible on when
Nagorno-Karabakh will be able to exercise its right to self-
determination, Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian told a Wednesday news
conference in Yerevan.

“The final agreement on settling the Karabakh conflict should proclaim
the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self- determination,
which would be recognized by the international community, and we are
ready to be flexible on the question of timing the realization of
this right,” he said.

Armenia will not sign any treaty that does not recognize the right
of Karabakh to self-determination, he said.

Speaking of the participation of Karabakh in the talks, Oskanian said
that Armenia had faced an alternative – either refuse to continue
talks with Azerbaijan without the participation of Nagorno-Karabakh,
or agree to continue them for the sake of preserving the process. The
Armenian leadership has chosen the latter option, he said.

“It is unimportant who holds the talks on the Armenian side,
Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. What is being discussed at the talks
is important. But sooner or later the time will come when the
participation of Nagorno-Karabakh in the talks will become inevitable,”
Oskanian said.

He reminded journalists that Nagorno-Karabakh had been a party to
the talks until spring 1997.

In the middle of January 2005, Prague will host the next meeting of
the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh in an armed conflict
with Armenia in the 1990s.