THE ESSENCE OF THE CONFLICT: WILL THEY RECOGNIZE OR NOT?

KarabakhOpen
12-06-2008 15:37:25

"My country is the country that began with separatism, and after we get
gained our independence, many separatists appealed to us for support;
sometimes we supported them, sometimes we didn’t," ingenuously said
the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state Matthew Bryza in drawing
parallels between Kosovo and Karabakh in an interview with the Regnum
news agency.

Matthew Bryza who is the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group
actually confessed that the essence of the conflict is the following:
will they recognize the independence of NKR or not? In other words,
it does not matter how many arguments there are in the legal folder of
one side and how many weapons in the arsenal of the other side. The
problem is the attitude of great powers, if they want to recognize,
they will, if not, continue to confront.

With regard to separatism from which the United States and a lot more
other countries began, Matthew Bryza actually recognized the right of
the people of Karabakh for self-determination. However, the diplomat
asserts that the problem is not recognition but its consequences.

"There is an international legal principle of territorial integrity,
and that has developed in recent years since the early days of
my country.

It’s a principle we have to support, we are obligated to by law.

It’s only on an exceptional basis when we can deviate from that
principle. Kosovo was an exception; there was a series of Security
Council Resolutions, and direct UN action, in the case of Kosovo
that made that situation different, made it unique in terms of
international law, because it is the UN and its Security Council that
are the highest purveyors of international law," Matthew Bryza said.

In a recent Baku-Moscow-Yerevan telebridge the director of
the Caucasian Institute also noted: "The Karabakh conflict is
political, and its solution should be sought in the political
sphere." Nevertheless, the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian political
scientists long discussed which party’s arguments are forceful.

For his part, the Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandyan
stated yesterday that the efforts of the Armenian side are aimed
at the recognition of the right of the people of Karabakh for
self-determination. Considering the pronouncements of the mediators,
nobody has been disputing this right for a long time now. And the
question occurs whether it is not time to direct the efforts of the
Armenian diplomacy at the solution of another problem.