ARF AND SERGE SARGSYAN DISAGREE ON KARABAKH RECOGNITION
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir, Armenia
Dec 6 2006

The ploughmen of the National Security Strategy of Armenia led
by Serge Sargsyan, the secretary of the Council of Security under
the president of Armenia and the minister of defense of Armenia,
are aspiring to creating a document which is supposed to guide all
the officials of the Armenian government, Serge Sargsyan says. In
other words, when a public official expresses a stance somewhere,
he or she must be guided by this strategy, be it a stance on internal
or external policies. The authors of this document, and experts and
officials who worked on it and the head of the taskforce assure that
a great number of experts were involved in drafting the document, and
it is a product of collective mind. This implies that the strategy
should at least express the common stance of the present government
on the objectives and directions of the national security of Armenia,
otherwise, one wing of the government or another would be against the
document. Nobody was against. This shows that there is real agreement
inside the government or the document is not important for anyone,
and they just raised a finger for it, or yet the statements that the
document is the result of collective work are false.

The first of the three options was rejected in the parliament. There
is no agreement in the government, and it became clear from the words
of the minister of defense. Serge Sargsyan announced at the rostrum
of the National Assembly that for Armenia that the recognition of the
independence of Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan is more important than
by the international community. The problem is not if the defense
minister is right. The problem is that several days ago Armen
Rustamyan, member of the Supreme Body of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun,
chair of the Committee of External Relations of the National Assembly
stated that if Azerbaijan does not accept the self-determination of
Karabakh, we should leave Azerbaijan and focus on the international
recognition. In other words, it is obvious that the disagreement
between the ARF Dashnaktsutyun in power and Serge Sargsyan in power
on a problem of the present and future of national security such as
the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. Serge Sargsyan thinks that the
recognition by Azerbaijan is primary, the ARF Dashnaktsutyun thinks
we should leave Azerbaijan and reach international recognition. On
the surface level these approaches may have something in common but
in depth these approaches are contrary. Perhaps, the ARFD could have
said that it is possible to make Azerbaijan recognize through the
recognition by the international community. Or Serge Sargsyan could
say that in order to solve the primary problem of recognition by
Azerbaijan it is necessary to reach international recognition. But
it would be a simplification of the problem. If the recognition
by Azerbaijan is primary, it means it is necessary to reach a
compromise rapidly and sign a peace agreement, otherwise Azerbaijan
will refuse to recognize. If the prime problem is the recognition
by the international community, the compromise should involve the
international community. It is self-evident that a compromise with
Azerbaijan and a compromise with the international community cannot be
the same. In other words, it implies almost fundamental differences
in policy. Consequently, it is evident that Serge Sargsyan and the
ARF Dashnaktsutyun have quite different approaches towards this,
and the question occurs whose approach has been laid at the basis of
the National Security Strategy and who should be obliged to accept
the other’s standpoint in public speeches. If both are laid at the
basis, the strategy is a waste of paper, especially considering that
the Ilyichevsk-Poti ferry is not sailing regularly.