WE ARE CONSISTENT AND FAIR IN EXPRESSING OUR VIEWS, MATTEW BRYZA
AzerTag
March 14 2008
Azerbaijan
U. S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Mattew Bryza gave an interview
to AzerTAc’s Washington-based correspondent about his last week trip
to the region and Washington’s attitude towards recent developments in
the South Caucasus. The following is the transcript of the interview.
AzerTAc correspondent: Mr. Bryza, the reason of our meeting today
is to talk about recent developments in the region and your last
week trip to Caucasus. These days, co-chairs are in Vienna with OSCE
chairman-in-office to go over his trip to the region and review the
latest troubling developments coming from Armenia and the cease-fire
line. We understand, your office was also present there. Can you
elaborate on what the co-chairs and OSCE make out of the current
situation?
Mattew Bryza: Sure. The reason I’m not in Vienna is because the
situation now is so serious that having just spent last week in the
region talking to the leadership I decided to stay here and help my
own government to take the right decisions on these very important
issues. I did send the member of my team to Vienna on my behalf. In
terms of cease-fire violations Ambassador Kasprjik and I together
were in both Baku and Yerevan during those tense days. What we make
of it is that we may never know who shot whom first. But we do know
that a very serious exchange of fire involving all kinds of automatic
weapons including rocket propel grenades, probably mortars happened.
Tragically and unfortunately, four Azerbaijani soldiers lost their
lives. Fortunately, the status quo seems to be reestablished. The
generals and key military leadership have been in touch and they
have hopefully reduced tension back to what is "normal" level, which
is also very dangerous. As we saw just on Sunday two Azerbaijani
civilians were shot apparently by snipers from the other side.
AzerTAc correspondent: You visited Baku and Yerevan last week. We
followed your meetings closely, but because of the unprecedented
censorship on local Armenian media within the framework of the
emergency rule, the world doesn’t have a clear picture of what’s
going on in the country right now. Can you talk about your Yerevan
trip? What was the message that you took to the Armenian government?
And some of the things you observed there?
Mattew Bryza: Yes. I’m glad you asked me that question. Because,
I know that in Azerbaijan people are watching closely what our
reaction is and they feel that, perhaps, we are more critical in
other cases than in the case of Armenia. What we decided to do send
me- the person who’s responsible for our relations with Armenia on
day-to-day basis- to assess the situation, deliver our messages and
try to redirect political dynamic back to democracy. That’s what I
did. The message is that it’s crucial to restore all media freedoms,
lift the state of emergency and begin the roundtable discussion of all
political representatives to restore democratic momentum. Message was
also that we absolutely deplored violence, no matter who initiated
it; whether it was a government or opposition, who in some cases
involved into violence. We called everyone in Armenia to respect
the rule of law. We do think that the government of Armenia has a
special responsibility to maintain peaceful and lawful ways without
violence, wherever possible. We wished there had never needed to be
an intervention by the government police on "Theater" Square. The
government of Armenia made its decision. Unfortunately, the tension
evolved into a very serious and, in fact, an unprecedented violence in
the history of Armenian elections. That’s a tragedy. There’s time and
space and opportunity to restore momentum. This is the most serious
and negative post-election development anywhere in the South Caucasus
since the end of the Soviet Union.
AzerTAc correspondent: Mr. Bryza, watching such a violent suppression
of democratic freedoms in Armenia, my next question seems natural
for lot of people in the region. Armenia has been and remains
one of the largest recipients of US assistance, including one of
the Millennium Challenge Account holders. A lot of money has been
appropriated to that country for democracy building efforts. Compared
to which Azerbaijan received dimes and nickels. But Washington has
been very vocal in its criticism of the speed of democratic reforms
in our country. In Georgia, following post-election confrontation,
President Saakashvili resigned and got re-elected in order to address
the Western criticism. Watching events unraveling in Armenia since
presidential elections on Feb 19th, did it cross the minds over here
whether that money was well spent?
Mattew Bryza: Absolutely. And, by the way, I was the person who had an
honor to be sent by Secretary Rice to speak with President Saakashvili
and other political leaders in Georgia. So, I am well aware of what our
messages has been in each case. I think, we had appropriate messages
in both cases. Yes, we are questioning the appropriateness of our
assistance levels to Armenia under these circumstances. Just two days
ago Ambassador John Danilovich who’s the chairman of the Millennium
Challenge Corporation sent a letter warning president Kocharian that we
have to review the appropriateness of Millennium Challenge program for
Armenia, unless, we see the restoration of its democratic momentum. So,
yes, we are reevaluating Millennium Challenge for Armenia. We are
also reevaluating all of our assistance programs to Armenia. You
always have to keep in mind in Azerbaijan that this is a thriving
democracy in the United States. Based on our separation of powers,
Congress is an equal branch of government that, in fact, is equal to
the executive branch. It exerts its power to the expenditures of the
budget. If the Congress decided it wants to provide a lot of assistance
to any country in the world, often there’s very little executive branch
can do to block that. So ,we have to work together as partners and
co-equal branches of power. That is what we are involved right now:
reassessing our assistance to Armenia. We’ll see where we come out.
AzerTAc correspondent: Secretary Rice speaking at the Congress hearings
mentioned that Armenian events and imposed state of emergency there
made it necessary to suspend some US programs in this country. Was
she talking about MCC programs?
Mattew Bryza: She is the chairman of the board of Millennium Challenge
Corporation, so she is totally familiar with everything.
There are additional programs, the ones you mentioned, that were
funded in high levels year after year. We have to reevaluate those
levels of funding as well. So, I assume, she had everything in mind.
AzerTAc correspondent: Many in the region compare March 1st events
in Yerevan with the brutal crackdown of protestors in Andijan in 2005.
Uzbek government has faced a very harsh and proper reaction of the
world community, whether Armenian government seems to get away with
rather soft criticism. An opposition nominee in Armenian elections
Mr. Ter-Petrosian in his recent article in Washington Post also talks
about the shock experienced by the pro-democratic forces in Armenia
watching the western reaction. People in Azerbaijan are not surprised,
because President Kocharian and president-elect Sarkissian have
practiced their violent methods on the innocent lives of the victims
of Nagorno-Karabakh war a decade ago. There’s a strong feeling in the
region about the double-standards shown to Armenian authorities. The
credibility of the United States keeps being questioned. What is your
response to that?
Mattew Bryza: My response would be that we are consistent and fair
in expressing our views about setbacks for democracy. I would just
encourage all of our friends in Azerbaijan to look at the Armenian
government’s denunciation of me. Yesterday Foreign Ministry of Armenia
denounced me, saying it was astonished by my sharp criticism of the
violence, harsh actions against opposition demonstrators in Yerevan,
which I made to the AP last Monday. So, the Armenian Government
thinks we’ve been unfairly critical. I would guess that our colleagues
and friends in Azerbaijan who feel there’s a double-standard simply
unaware of what we’ve actually been saying.
We’ve been quite critical. In any case, I don’t see any benefits of
comparing what happened in Yerevan and Andijan. What we want now is
for Armenia to move forward. There has been significant damage done
to the democratic process in Armenia. It needs to be repaired. In
Georgia, the damage was done last November and Georgia has repaired
and is repairing that damage. We hope to see the same now in Armenia.
We hope very soon we’ll see lifting of restrictions on media freedom
and the state of emergency.
AzerTAc correspondent: Do you believe that there’s a connection between
the political crisis in Armenia and the intensive cease-fire violation
on the front line in Karabakh?
Mattew Bryza: I have no way to tell, because we really don’t know
who fired first. We may never know that. It’s hard to tell. You
can come up with all sorts of speculative justifications of why
it makes sense for Armenia or Azerbaijan to shoot first or why it
would never make sense for either country to shoot first. I really
don’t know. What really matters is that we maintain the status quo,
cease-fire violation stops and nobody uses it for political purpose.
AzerTAc correspondent: You expectations from tomorrow’s UN General
Assembly vote on the resolution on the situation in the occupied
territories of Azerbaijan. What will the position of your government
be?
Mattew Bryza: I’d rather not disclose what our position is going to
be. We are still involved into discussions with our colleagues in
Azerbaijani government in Baku, Embassy here and Mission in New-York.
Azerbaijan has a sovereign right to raise any issue of concern to it
in the UN or any other international forum in which its member of. We
hope, Azerbaijan chooses to give us more time to negotiate, but if it
is still decides to move forward with the resolution, we hope that
whatever draft will reflect the balance and what we think is a very
fair proposal of Basic Principles that we’ve been negotiating with
Azerbaijan and Armenia for the past couple of years. We would like
to be supportive of any resolution that boosts the peace process. So,
we hope that’s the draft that will be on the table.
AzerTAc correspondent: Thank you for talking to us.