SARKISIAN COOLS TALK OF KARABAKH PEACE
Emil Danielyan

Armenialiberty.org
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Sept 1 2009

Armenia — President Serzh Sarkisian addresses top Armenian diplomats
on September 1, 2009.

President Serzh Sarkisian sought on Tuesday to lower expectations of an
impending resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that it
will take years despite serious progress made in Armenian-Azerbaijani
negotiations.

Meeting with Armenia’s ambassadors around the world, he said:
"It is important that you too explain to everyone — and officials
in the countries where you are accredited in the first instance —
that the conflict’s resolution is not a matter of days, weeks or
months. Everyone must clearly understand that we are currently
negotiating on only several of the basic principles of the settlement.

"Even in case of reaching agreement on them, many other principles
and the accord itself, which should regulate details of the [peace]
implementation, will remain unresolved. That is a process that requires
a great deal of work."

The remarks came just over one month before Sarkisian’s widely
anticipated meeting with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The U.S.,
Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group hope
that it will remove the remaining hurdles to the acceptance by the
conflicting parties of their basic principles of a Karabakh settlement.

Aliyev and Sarkisian reportedly narrowed their differences over the
proposed framework agreement at their previous meetings held earlier
this year. The Armenian leader has since faced growing criticism
from his political opponents at home for his readiness to embrace
the mediators’ peace formula which envisages significant territorial
concessions to Azerbaijan.

Sarkisian argued on Tuesday that while some of the basic principles
are "far from an ideal solution imagined by ourselves" the proposed
settlement upholds the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination
and "multi-layered security guarantees." He dismissed opposition
claims to the contrary as "petty speculation."