ANCA SLAMS BRYZA FOR RETREAT FROM PRINCIPLE IN U.S. POLICY TOWARD KARABAKH

PanARMENIAN.Net
14.10.2008 14:45 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
Chairman Ken Hachikian, in remarks delivered yesterday before more
than 900 elected officials and community leaders at the annual Western
Region banquet, publicly and forcefully challenged recent statements by
senior State Department official Matt Bryza that, as a precondition for
peace, Armenia must agree that Nagorno Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan,
ANCA Communications Director Elizabeth Chouldjian told PanARMENIAN.Net.

Speaking before a capacity crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library, Hachikian sharply condemned the "retreat from principle"
in U.S. policy toward the people and republic of Nagorno Karabakh –
who have strived, at the brutal cost of a generation of its best
sons and daughters – to live up to the fundamentally American ideal
that all people deserve to live free of foreign tyranny, under a
government of their own choosing." He added that, "just this past
week, we saw a senior State Department official, Matt Bryza, moving
farther from even the pretense of supporting democracy, by saying
that Armenia must accept the false proposition that Nagorno Karabakh
is part of Azerbaijan. He’s absolutely wrong. And we all know it –
and so does Baku and Ankara."

In an October 9th interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation
Russian language service, Bryza, who serves as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State and also the State Department’s representative
to the OSCE Minsk Group talks, stated that Armenia must agree that
Nagorno Karabakh is legally part of Azerbaijan.

His comments follow a series of statements, over the past several
weeks, in which Bryza has demonstrated a pro-Azerbaijani bias by
prioritizing the misapplication of the principle of territorial
integrity to the Nagorno Karabakh issue over the basic right of all
peoples to self-determination.