PRESS RELEASE
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia
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Statement by H. E. Vartan Oskanian
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia
61st Session of the UN General Assembly
New York
September 25, 2007

Madame President,

It is a pleasure to congratulate you and to wish you a year that is
relatively free of crises and catastrophes. In other words, a year not like
the one we¹ve just had during which my good friend Ian Eliasson successfully
navigated through troubled waters.

The year of turmoil, as he called it, included conflicts, as well as
man-made and natural disasters that required our collective response. These
challenges to our united will are becoming more numerous, more dangerous and
more complex.

Of all the events last year, the one which stood out most tragically was the
war in Lebanon. There I believe we lost a great deal of credibility in the
eyes of the peoples of the world who had a right to expect that political
expediency would not prevail. We watched with great disappointment and
dismay the political bickering within the Security Council and the
reluctance to bring about an immediate ceasefire, even as the bombs were
being dropped indiscriminately. When any world body or power loses moral
authority, the effectiveness to undertake challenges which require
collective response is undermined.

In other areas, a united international community has succeeded. It has
played a supportive role in the civilized process which brought Montenegro
to this day and this body. Together, we created and empowered the
Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council – two bodies which
hold great promise in delivering deeper and more purposeful engagement by a
world community committed to building peace and protecting human rights.

The most insipid and threatening challenges in the world remain those of
poverty and hopelessness. When the world¹s leaders met six years ago, they
decided that the UN was the ideal mechanism to confront the social ills
facing our societies, they publicly accepted their combined responsibility
in achieving accelerated and more even social and economic development. They
said to the world that, together, we will channel international processes
and multinational resources to tackle the most basic human needs. Thus, they
placed the principle and potential of united action on the judgment block.
Six years later, the world continues to watch in earnest to see if
individual and regional interests can be rallied in striving for the common
good.

Madame President,

We are faced with the same challenges, locally. In Armenia, we are
encouraged and rewarded by our extensive reforms. These reforms are
irreversible and already showing remarkable results. We are going to move
now to second generation reforms in order to continue to register the
successes of the last half decade: legislative and administrative strides
forward, an open, liberal economy, double-digit growth.

Encouraged by our own successes, this year we have determined to build on
our course of economic recovery and target rural poverty. We are reminded of
the remarkable promise made to the victims of global poverty in 2000: ³To
free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing
conditions of extreme poverty.² To do this at home, we will leverage the
philanthropy of international organizations and friendly governments with
the traditional generosity of our Diaspora to build and repair
infrastructure, which is essential to facilitate and enable economic
development.

But infrastructure alone does not reduce poverty and remove unjust
inequalities. Creating economic opportunities, teaching the necessary skills
– these are essential to erase the deep development disparities that exist
today between cities and rural areas.

Madame President, we will begin in our border communities, because unlike
other countries, where borders are points of interaction and activity,
Armenia¹s borders to the east and the west remain closed. As a result,
regional economic development suffers.

But with Turkey, it is more than our economies that suffer. It is the
dialogue between our two peoples that suffers. Turkey¹s insistence on
keeping the border closed, on continuing to prevent direct contact and
communication, freezes the memories of yesterday instead of creating new
experiences to forge the memories of tomorrow. We continue to remain hopeful
that Turkey will see that blocking relations until there is harmony and
reciprocal understanding is really not a policy. On the contrary, it¹s an
avoidance of a responsible policy to forge forward with regional cooperation
at a time and in a region with growing global significance.

Madame President, let me take a minute to reflect on Kosovo, as so many have
done. We follow the Kosovo self-determination process very closely. We
ourselves strongly support the process of self-determination for the
population of Nagorno Karabakh. Yet, we don¹t draw parallels between these
two or with any other conflicts. We believe that conflicts are all different
and each must be decided on its own merits. While we do not look at the
outcome of Kosovo as a precedent, on the other hand, a Kosovo decision
cannot and should not result in the creation of obstacles to
self-determination for others in order to pre-empt the accusation of
precedence. Such a reverse reaction – to prevent or pre-empt others from
achieving well-earned self-determination – is unacceptable.

Efforts to do just that – by elevating territorial integrity above all other
principles – are already underway, especially in this chamber. But this
contradicts the lessons of history. There is a reason that the Helsinki
Final Act enshrines self-determination as an equal principle. In
international relations, just as in human relations, there are no absolute
rights. There are also responsibilities. A state must earn the right to lead
and govern. States have the responsibility to protect their citizens. A
people choose the government which represents them.

The people of Nagorno Karabakh chose long ago not to be represented by the
government of Azerbaijan. They were the victims of state violence, they
defended themselves, and succeeded against great odds, only to hear the
state cry foul and claim sovereignty and territorial integrity.

But the government of Azerbaijan has lost the moral right to even suggest
providing for their security and their future, let alone to talk of custody
of the people of Nagorno Karabakh.

Azerbaijan did not behave responsibly or morally with the people of Nagorno
Karabakh, who it considered to be its own citizens. They sanctioned
massacres in urban areas, far from Nagorno Karabakh; they bombed and
displaced more than 300,000 Armenians; they unleashed the military; and
after they lost the war and accepted a ceasefire, they proceeded to destroy
all traces of Armenians on their territories.

In the most cynical expression of such irresponsibility, this last December,
a decade after the fighting had stopped, they completed the final
destruction and removal of thousands of massive hand-sculpted cross-stones –
medieval Armenian tombstones elaborately carved and decorated.

Such destruction, in an area with no Armenians, at a distance from Nagorno
Karabakh and any conflict areas, is a callous demonstration that
Azerbaijan’s attitude toward tolerance, human values, cultural treasures,
cooperation or even peace, has not changed.

One cannot blame us for thinking that Azerbaijan is not ready or interested
in a negotiated peace. Yet, having rejected the other two compromise
solutions that have been proposed over the last 8 years, they do not want to
be accused of rejecting the peace plan on the table today. Therefore, they
are using every means available – from state violence to international
maneuvers – to try to bring the Armenians to do the rejecting.

But Armenia is on record: we have agreed to each of the basic principles in
the document that¹s on the table today. Yet, in order to give this or any
document a chance, Azerbaijan can¹t think, or pretend to think, that there
is still a military option. There isn¹t. The military option is a tried and
failed option. Compromise and realism are the only real options.

The path that Nagorno Karabakh has chosen for itself over these two decades
is irreversible. It succeeded in ensuring its self-defense, it proceeded to
set up self-governance mechanisms, and it controls its borders and its
economy. Formalizing this process is a necessary step toward stability in
our region. Dismissing, as Azerbaijan does, all that¹s happened in the last
20 years and petulantly insisting that things must return to the way they
were, is not just unrealistic, but disingenuous.

Madame President, Nagorno Karabakh is not a cause. It is a place, an ancient
place, a beautiful garden, with people who have earned the right to live in
peace and without fear. We ask for nothing more. We expect nothing less.