LEVON TER-PETROSIAN CONSIDERS IMPOSSIBLE CONTINUATION OF NEGOTIATIONS OVER KARABAKH BY CURRENT FORMAT

Noyan Tapan
Nov 7, 2007

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 7, NOYAN TAPAN. "Our supreme goal is to restore
Nagorno Karabakh’s participation in the negotiations process." Levon
Ter-Petrosian, the first RA President, stated at the November 3 meeting
with the youth at Yerevan’s Armenia Marriott hotel. According to him,
both the international community and the Minsk Group Co-chairs, during
10 years, have got used to a format, which is convenient for them, as
it is easier to negotiate with two than with three parties. Besides,
Azerbaijan has also got used to that format. Therefore, it will be
very difficult to restore the former negotiations format.

L. Ter-Petrosian reminded that starting 1992, when the negotiations
were launched, Azerbaijan tried to force Karabakh out of that process
and to negotiate just with Armenia, as it wished to present this
conflict to the world not as a conflict of mother country and of
enclave making part of it even if juridically or of an ethnoterritorial
unit, but to make it an inter-state problem. "It failed in the period
we held the power. We achieved the fact that at the OSCE Budapest
summit of 1994, Nagorno Karabakh was already recognized as one of
the conflict’s three equal parties. This mandate was reaffirmed at
the Prague summit of the following year.

Therefore, it was not a wish, a caprice, it was already the status
of the internationally recognized Karabakh.

According to L. Ter-Petrosian, when Robert Kocharian was elected the
Armenian President, being from Karabakh, he just assumed the function
of presenting Karabakh’s viewpoint. "The international community and
Azerbaijan, as they say, died from happiness. I do not know how such
a present could be made to Azerbaijan. Since that day, after 1998,
Karabakh has been left out of all negotiations processes," the first
RA President said.

L. Ter-Petrosian stated that the current authorities have failed the
negotiations for 10 years and, according to him, "if we permit them
to continue this way, we will receive a war."