"ARMENIA SUSTAINED A DEFEAT"

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04:47 pm | April 22, 2009 | Politics

"Armenia has sustained a defeat," Hrant Margaryan, a representative
of the ARF Bureau, said during today’s roundtable on Armenian-Turkish
relations.

"A year ago, Turkey did not have any moral right to voice any stance on
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: it was not even considered a conflicting
side. Turkey also made it clear that the settlement of the Karabakh
conflict is a vital step in the normalisation of Armenian-Turkish
relations. Today Turkey has proven that it is an interested party in
the Karabakh issue. At this juncture, the Armenian side must accept
the fact that it has lost out", said Mr. Margaryan.

He says Armenia could have enjoyed a victory a year ago as it agreed
to open the frontier without any preconditions. Then Turkey was
considered to be intolerant and ill-disposed towards Armenia.

"Armenia has lost out since it conceded certain principles that the
Armenian government had adopted since 1990. "If we had held fast to
those principles today the Turkish side would be perceived as the
guilty party. Today Turkey has changed its image and is represented
as a country seeking friendly relations with its neighbours,"
Mr. Margaryan noted.

"National issues are one unity, and none of them must be given
preference to. Our approach to national issues needs uniformity, and
that uniformed approach must be based on an overriding perspective. We
fall into a trap when we believe that we can concede nothing when it
comes to the Karabakh issue but that we can give much elsewhere.

This is what we need to understand – that the issues of Karabakh, the
Genocide, Javakhk, the liberation of Western Armenia and Armenia’s
independence, are all intertwined and comprise a totality. They all
must be tackled as parts of a whole, in which one cannot be sacrificed
at the cost of another," said Mr. Margaryan.

The ARF Dashnaktsutyun member called on the Armenian leadership
to draw back from its preliminary agreements. "I do think that the
Armenian side should adhere to its principles. If once Armenia agreed
to establish a commission of historians, to discuss historical issues
or recognise Turkey’s territorial wholeness or borders, today we must
refuse all of them," added Hrant Margaryan.

"The Armenian Genocide is Armenia’s open nerve and the one who dares
to touch it, will be backfired," concluded Mr. Margaryan.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress