ACCORDING TO EDUARD SHARMAZANOV, ARMENIA WILL NEVER MAKE ONE-SIDED CONCESSIONS

Noyan Tapan

Dec 5, 2008

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 5, NOYAN TAPAN. The key point of the joint statement
signed by the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing
countries, France, Russia, and the U.S. on December 4 in Helsinki is
that the principles of the November 2 Moscow Declaration should be
kept, and it is once more stipulated that conflict’s solution through
a war should be excluded. The latter is especially important in the
respect that after Moscow Declaration’s signing Azeri President
Ilham Aliyev again did not exclude the possibility of a military
solution. Eduard Sharmazanov, a member of the RA National Assembly RPA
faction, expressed such an opinion at the December 5 press briefing.

He said that the Armenian side has an initiating policy in the Nagorno
Karabakh settlement, is guided by state and national interests and
will never make one-sided concessions. And the concessions should
be in the interests of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, that is, of the
Armenian people.

"Let us not forget that we are the winning side in this national
liberation fight, in this war, and let our Azeri colleagues not forget
that," the RPA deputy said.

Touching upon MG American Co-chairman Matthew Bryza’s statement made
in Helsinki the day before that it is the principle of Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity that should be primary in the process of
Nagorno Karabakh settlement without excluding some possibility
of exercising nations’ self-determination right, E. Sharmazanov
noted that "Mr Bryza is in his style." "I am convinced that when he
comes to Armenia he will once more say that either the journalists
misunderstood him or interpreted his speech wrongly. However, it is
not so important for me. The most important is that Mr Bryza and all
co-chairs should realize that Nagorno Karabakh was part of Soviet
Azerbaijan in the status of an autonomous region, and the extent of
that self-determination right did not satisfy the NKR population," E.

Sharmazanov said reminding that "NKR has never and no day been a
subject of independent Azerbaijan."