Haykakan Zhamanak
Sept 23 2008
Armenia

Armenian President Ready "To Cede Karabakh" to Azerbaijan

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has started carrying out a major
programme of ceding Nagornyy Karabakh to Azerbaijan, pro-opposition
Haykakan Zhamanak daily reported on 23 September.

Sargsyan has to cede Karabakh to remain in power, the paper said,
adding that Sargsyan’s predecessor, Robert Kocharyan, had remained in
power for 10 years "playing around the Karabakh issue". The author
of the article says that Sargsyan has to "shift to real actions"
as his predecessor had already exhausted all possible games around
the negotiations table.

Hakobyan says it is not surprising that Turkish Foreign Minister
Ali Babacan has said recently that Turkey is optimistic with regard
to Armenia’s political will in the Karabakh issue, because President
Sargsyan recently told the Azerbaijani president that "maybe, Karabakh
people express a wish to live as a part of Azerbaijan in a referendum"
if Azerbaijan makes serious investments in Karabakh. The problem is
that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan tried to show Ilham Aliyev
ways of returning Karabakh to Azerbaijan during the negotiations,
Hakobyan writes.

The author says that one can justify Sargsyan saying that his words
were a joke, but the seriousness of the situation is that Sargsyan’s
words "fully reveal Sargsyan’s moods and programmes on the Nagornyy
Karabakh issue". One should remember in this regard that Turkish
President Abdullah Gul said after his recent meeting with Sargsyan
that Armenia is ready to return occupied territories [Azerbaijani
territories currently under Armenian control] to Azerbaijan, the
author says.

Hakobyan writes that President Sargsyan agreed to Turkey’s mediation
in Karabakh conflict and that much depends on the first tripartite
meeting between the Armenian, Turkish and Azerbaijani foreign ministers
during the upcoming session of the UN General Assembly in New York. It
is obvious that "the Armenian and the Azerbaijani sides have come to a
common denominator concerning an option of settlement of the Karabakh
conflict within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity,
and now it is the issue of deadlines that remains".