VARTAN OSKANIAN’S STATEMENT AT UN GA SESSION

Armenpress
Sept 25 2006

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS: ‘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
we’ve 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 Peace building 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 world’s 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: "To free our fellow men, women and children from the
abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty." 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, Armenia’s 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. Turkey’s 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, it’s
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
don’t 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 that’s on the table today. Yet, in order to
give this or any document a chance, Azerbaijan can’t think, or pretend
to think, that there is still a military option. There isn’t. 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 that’s 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.’

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress