Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
Dec 27 2007

Azerbaijani and Armenian Diasporas in Russia Comment on
Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
27.12.07 13:12

Russia, Moscow /corr. Trend R.Agayev/ The results of the Presidential
elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan will not affect the
Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, stated
Soyun Sadikov, the President of the National Cultural Autonomy of the
Russian Azerbaijanis, `AzerRos’.

The Presidential elections in Armenia have been scheduled for
February and for Azerbaijan in October 2008. `I do not believe that
the election of a new president or re-election of the current
president will affect the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement,’
Sadikov reported to Trend on 26 December. `I have doubts that after
the election of a new president in Armenia, the new State Head will
settle Nagorno-Karabakh problem in a way that Nagorno-Karabakh will
recognize special jurisdiction of official Baku. No Armenian
president can take this responsibility and therefore, I think that
everything depends on Azerbaijan, its people and the government,’ he
said.

According to Sadikov, in order to resolve the conflict, talks should
exist between official of Baku and the Azerbaijani citizens of
Armenian nationality who do not recognize themselves as Azerbaijani
citizens, and the interference of the foreign forces will bring
nothing.

Georgi Ter-Gazaryants, the First Vice President of Union of Russian
Armenians (URA), said in his interview with Trend that the settlement
of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is really being protracted, but the way
of settlement has been accurately selected. According to him, the
presidents of the two countries began the way of resolving this
conflict through talks, Heydar Aliyev, the ex-President of
Azerbaijan, took the first steps enough actively and began the
process of talks, which lasted and got transferred to Ilham Aliyev,
the new President of Azerbaijan.

Ter-Gazaryants said that 2007 was a useful year from the point of
view of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Presidents of Azerbaijan
and Armenia held six meetings. He said that during the meeting with
the delegation of the URA in Yerevan, the President of Armenia,
Robert Kocharyan, expressed satisfaction with the final meeting with
his Azerbaijani counterpart, and stated that both sides reached an
agreement to make no comments about the results./p>

The First Vice President considers that the confidentiality will be
useful for the people of both the sides, any information leakage may
be wrongly accepted and expected that the early information may yield
negative results. `After the Presidents reach an agreement, it needs
to carry out the major work of informing it to the people, so that
they also accept the decisions which will be made there. These
decisions will affect the territorial moments. Of course, there are
territories that are not in need of impingement. They have never been
the territories of Armenia. However, there are certain issues on
which they have themselves reached at an agreement and yet these have
not been publicized,’ he said.

According to him, even the western experts confirm that the recent
meetings of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia inspire the
symptoms of the closeness of settling the issue. Ter-Gazaryants
stressed that in the recent period; the several actions have been
carried out, which are considered accurate. According to him, it
needs to prepare the peoples of two countries to live in the same way
as previously. He remembered the visit of the Ambassadors of
Azerbaijan and Armenia in Russia to Khankendi, Yerevan and Baku with
the scientific and cultural figures, and important meetings with the
Presidents. The efforts of the popular diplomacy are in demand
because the issue will not be resolved without the public opinion,
Ter-Gazaryants stated.

The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began in
1988 due to the Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since
1992, the Armenian Armed Forces have occupied 20% of Azerbaijan
including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven neighbouring
districts. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire
agreement which ended the active hostilities. The Co-Chairs of the
OSCE Minsk Group ( Russia, France and US) are currently the holding
peaceful negotiations.