VAHRAM ATANESYAN: IF WE CONTINUE THE SAME WAY, WE WILL NOT SUCCEED
KarabakhOpen
23-04-2008 17:55:10
Recently they have started criticizing the information policy over
the past decade as insufficient in the context of settlement of the
Karabakh issue.
The speaker of the Armenian parliament Tigran Torosyan also confessed
it, who said the stance of NKR was not conveyed to the international
community sufficiently. We had a talk with the chair of the NKR
National Assembly Committee of Foreign Relations Vahram Atanesyan
who thinks that the information policy is a component of the national
security doctrine from which propaganda should stem.
"It is difficult to conduct a sufficient information policy unless
there is a doctrine. I do not think that the shortcomings of the past
years are possible to correct through a situational solution. In other
words, any state conducts a policy and conveys it to its public and the
international community. Unfortunately, there is no unified national
doctrine on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. At any rate,
both in the years of the armed conflict and the ceasefire attempts
were made to reach a situational solution," said Vahram Atanesyan.
With regard to the foreign policy he said first the model was
adopted that Armenia accepts what Nagorno-Karabakh accepts, and
if Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan reach agreement on the status,
Armenia does not reject it, which was the approach of the first
president of Armenia till the end of his tenure. "Naturally, the
entire external state propaganda was directed at the fulfillment of
this idea, which the opposition criticized. In 1998-2008 Armenia was
the main negotiator, and the state propaganda was that the sides may
reach a solution which will satisfy them and Nagorno-Karabakh. Today
in order to change the focus and make a new emphasis it is necessary
to sum up the experience of the past years, both the achievements
and shortcomings and finally decide whether we have our idea of the
solution of this problem to convey to the world. If we have a common
idea of settlement or non-settlement of the issue, the vectors of the
propaganda, both internal and external, should stem from it. Otherwise,
we cannot convey the problem to the world in one way and to our public
in another way," said the Member of Parliament.
According to him, in order to work out a common approach, a
powerful public consensus is necessary. The NKR political forces,
NGOs, the society should agree to the option of solution which we
can reach. "Unfortunately, my impression is that there is no such
consensus in the society. If there is no consensus, each political
force, each class of the society has its idea of the solution of the
problem and carries out their propaganda, which causes controversy
of stances. Certainly, there must be a spectrum, it is natural, but
eventually it must lead to the main goal: what do we offer to the
international community, which is our approach to the settlement of
the problem?" says the chair of the Committee of Foreign Relations.
The member of parliament thinks it is time that more and more people
started speaking about the settlement of the issue and international
recognition of NKR. Otherwise, what was in the past years continues,
it seems that only a few people are speaking about this problem,
which is not sufficient. Vahram Atanesyan thinks we must admit that
the children who were sitting on the shoulders of their fathers
and brothers during the February demonstrations of 1988 are already
grown up and may have an idea of the settlement of the issue which
is different from that of the previous generation.
According to the member of parliament, the solution is to work out
a national security doctrine, adopt it as a law and be guided by
it. "The executive should work out the doctrine. In the context of
the recent discussions we have prepared a draft conclusion of the
factions of the parliament which recommend the executive to work
out the national security doctrine and present it to the National
Assembly. As a situational solution we recommend the government to
set up a special working group for strategic studies and information,
which deals with setting up media, such as an internet resource,
newspaper, radio station, independent television. It is necessary
to recruit a team to do this work, which is the most important. Do
we have 4 or 5 specialists in NKR who can do this work? I do not
underestimate our intellectual potential but I cannot see them. If
we are going to do what we have done so far, we will not succeed. We
need professionals," Vahram Atanesyan said.