AT THAT TIME SERGE SARGSYAN COULD NOT EVEN THINK

Lragir, Armenia
Nov 15 2006

"… I did not start considering compromise in 2001, I have been
considering it since the early 1990s. I considered compromise when
I persuaded our squads, our guys that it is necessary to destroy
a number of emplacements and the security area never intended to
enlarge the territory of Armenia and Karabakh." This is a passage
from the address of the defense minister of Karabakh during the
hearings on the Karabakh issue at the National Assembly of Armenia,
when he answered the questions of the participants of the hearings.

Did Serge Sargsyan speak about compromise, in other words, the return
of the liberated territories in the early 90s, during the war when
battles for these territories were going on? On November 15 this
question was asked to Arkady Karapetyan, former commander of the
Karabakh war at the Hayeli Club, who was one of the persons who made
decisions on the military actions.

"If you told a soldier they were going to take something to return
later, he would not fight. He is not a fool. He lives once and he
would not want to die for something which would be returned later by
someone else. This is very simple. As to us, the leaders, the fighers,
and so on, this did not occur to anyone," says Arkady Karapetyan. He
says the territories were liberated because they belonged to us, and
the Armenian soldiers fought with this idea in their minds, unlike
the Azerbaijanis, who started living in these teritories in the 1940s,
therefore they fled during the war because they thought this territory
did not belong to them, says the leader of the Yerkrapahs of Karabakh.

Arkady Karapetyan says he is unaware of Serge Sargsyan’s likelihood
regarding the compromise "as long ago as in the 90s". "At that time,
they did not think about these things, they did what they were told
to do from somewhere else. Now he has started thinking in retrospect
what he was doing. At that time he could not say such a thing. At that
time he was too little to say such things," stated Arkady Karapetyan.