KARABAKH POLITICAL FORCES DEMAND STEPANAKERT’S ROLE IN PEACE TALKS
Lusine Musayelian

July 16 2009

A number of political forces in Karabakh have called for participation
of this unrecognized Armenian republic in the negotiating process
currently conducted between Armenia and Azerbaijan and warned against
"jeopardizing" the security of the people living in the area.

In a joint statement issued on Thursday, eight political parties,
among them four represented in the unrecognized state’s parliament,
said that "the ouster of Karabakh from the negotiating process,
the actual disregard of its statehood and the manifestations of
discriminative approaches towards the resolution of the conflict
at the current stage doom the efforts in the Azerbaijani-Karabakh
conflict settlement to failure."

The statement presented by representative of the Karabakh Central
Committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun)
David Ishkhanian also says:

"We reiterate our demand – to respect the right to self-determination
of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, to secure Nagorno-Karabakh’s
participation in the conflict settlement process as a full party,
not to jeopardize the security of Nagorno-Karabakh’s people, the main
guarantee of which is the independent statehood of Nagorno-Karabakh
and territorial integrity consolidated by the Nagorno-Karabakh
constitution."

The statement of the Karabakh political parties comes on the eve of
President Serzh Sarkisian’s visit to Russian capital Moscow where
the Armenian leader is due to continue internationally mediated talks
on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement with his Azerbaijani counterpart
Ilham Aliev.