RA FM: RESPONSIBILITY FOR NEGOTIATIONS’ DEADLOCK RESTS WITH BAKU

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
March 17 2006

“In the civilized world there is not a country or a nation that uses
the amount of its budget to compete with the neighbors. I believe
the actions of the kind cannot add one’s honor. Nowadays there are
other spheres of competition – economical, cultural. The Azeri party
is aware that Armenia surpasses it in the above-mentioned spheres”,
stated RA FM Vardan Oskanyan in an interview with the Second Armenian
TV when commenting on the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s statement,
Regnum reports.

To remind, March 16, while speaking at the opening of the Second
Congress of the world Azerbaijanis, President of Azerbaijan stated:
“My task is to make military budget of Azerbaijan equal to all the
budget of Armenia in the near future”.

According to RA FM, “Azerbaijan’s statement on bloating military
budget and making it equal with Armenia’s state budget is not news,
such statements used to be repeatedly made”.

“Let’s turn to the U. N. human development ratio, which includes health
care, education and other spheres. Undoubtedly, we surpass Azerbaijan
by all the rates. We are superior having positive atmosphere, free
economy, as well as democracy, human rights and freedom of speech. This
is the international organizations’ estimation. There are no points
of comparison between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the spheres”, stated
RA FM.

“We face a task to prepare our societies for peace, not war. We
regret such statements, consider them to be negative and believe
responsibility for the negotiations’ deadlock rests with Baku”,
stated Vardan Oskanyan.

According to the Minister, the principal goal is to manage to continue
the process and go on acting on the positive factors we used to have
before the Presidents’ talks in Rambouillet. “It is not a secret that
in Rambouillet Azerbaijan stepped backward in respect of the positive
issues. It is very important to return the process to the zero point,
the so-called “pre – Rambouillet position”, where there are a lot of
positive sides, and to build the process on the basis”, noted Oskanyan.

In Oskanyan’s words, in the course of a meeting that is to be held
in Istanbul March 20 the OSCE Minsk group Co-Chairs will chart
future tasks. “We will wait for their decision. We should continue
the process, as we think the process has not been exhausted yet”,
stated RA FM.