US STATE DEPARTMENT REVISES MISSTATEMENT REGARDING NAGORNO- KARABAGH

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
April 20 2007

The U.S. Department of State has revised the mistaken assertion,
within the Armenia section of its recently released annual human rights
report, that, "Armenia continues to occupy the Azerbaijani territory
of Nagorno-Karabagh and seven surrounding Azerbaijani territories,"
reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The amended language, released this week, has been posted on the
Department’s website. It reads as follows: "Armenian forces occupy
large portions of Azerbaijan territory adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian officials maintain that they do not ‘occupy’ Nagorno-Karabakh
itself." The Azerbaijan section, which included nearly identical
language, has yet to be revised.

"We take note of the fact that the State Department has responded to
our concern that the report’s mischaracterization of Nagorno-Karabagh’s
status would be detrimental to the U.S. government’s role as an
impartial mediator of the Minsk Group negotiations," said ANCA
Executive Director Aram Hamparian. "We remain concerned that the
amended text continues to fall short of accurately describing the
situation, as well as by the fact that the Azerbaijan section of
the report continues to make incorrect assertions, thus making its
text inconsistent with the State Department’s own revision of the
Armenia section."

ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian, in an April 3, 2007 letter to Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, expressed the Armenian American community’s
profound concern that, "such statements fundamentally misrepresent the
well-documented reality in the region, contradict the Department’s
previous human rights reports and undermine the credibility of the
United States as an impartial arbiter destined to a leadership
role in the OSCE Minsk Group peace process." He added that,
"These unprecedented assertions are both factually inaccurate
and counter-productive to our government’s aim of reaching a
durable resolution to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. To say that
Nagorno-Karabagh is an Azerbaijani territory and that Armenia
occupies Nagorno- Karabagh and other territories is to ignore the
very fundamentals of this conflict. These statements only serve to
send the wrong message to the Azerbaijani side and further complicate
the peace negotiations."