AZERI SELF-DECEPTION CAN UNDERMINE KARABAKH PROCESS

PanARMENIAN.Net
20.03.2008 16:22 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian praised
the states which did not support the Azerbaijani resolution on
Karabakh.

"This is a non-binding, or consultative pronouncement by the General
Assembly. I don’t think it will have an affect the process, unless
Azerbaijan is engaged not just in deception but self-deception,"
the Minister said.

"It was unnecessary, ill-timed, mean-spirited, both as a process
and a product. If Azeris expect to use this for anything other than
their domestic purposes, if they have convinced themselves that the
international community truly supports the one-sided desires they
had enumerated in the text of this resolution, then this will cause
serious problems in the negotiations.

One thing must be clear for Azerbaijan – that no amount of
resolutions will make Nagorno Karabakh deviate from its path of
self-determination," he emphasized.

"Show me one example in history when a conflict has been resolved by
the passage of a document by an international organization or by third
countries. This has never happened and is not going to happen now. In
1948, the UN General Assembly resolution to partition Palestine didn’t
solve anything. Recently, the Security Council resolution on Kosovo
didn’t manage to bring the sides together in a meaningful way either."

"I remember Lisbon where the OSCE Chairman-in-Office made a statement
about Nagorno Karabakh. Azeri joy knew no limits then. It took years
for Azerbaijan to understand that the document had no value," the
Minister noted.

By insisting on this non-binding, non-collective statement, Azerbaijan
proved that it wants to retreat from the Minsk Group process, and
therefore from the content of the document on the table. This country
is ready to negotiate what it wants, but not to compromise," Minister
Oskanian said in an interview with Azdak Beirut-based newspaper.