LEVON TER-PETROSSYAN: THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS HAS ENTERED INTO A STAGE SERZH SARGSYAN HAS NO WAY OUT OF

ArmInfo
2009-09-18 21:00:00

ArmInfo. The Nagorno-Karabakh peace process has entered into a stage
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has no way out of, the leader of
the Armenian National Congress, the first president of Armenia Levon
Ter-Petrossyan said during an opposition rally today.

One of the reasons why Ter-Petrossyan thinks so is the unprecedented
statement made by the presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair
states July 10 2009. By making such a statement they showed that they
were directly involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. Such
things generally happen when negotiations are coming to an end. So,
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may well be resolved in the near future.

If a statement is made on a summit level, its principles are not
disputable and cannot be changed.

The three postulates of the official Armenian propaganda are not
true: the settlement plan does no contain international guarantees of
Nagorno-Karabakh’s security, does not provide a land corridor between
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and does not let Nagorno-Karabakh exercise
its right to self-determination. The absence of these elements means
that, initially planned as a package solution, the Madrid proposals
have been transformed into a phased scenario. That is, the Armenian
authorities have come back to the scenario they rejected pointblank
10 years ago.

Ter-Petrossyan said that the scenario proposed by the co-chairs in
1997 was much more acceptable to the Armenian party than the present
one is: first, it envisaged deployment of peacekeeping forces in the
conflict zone and said nothing about the return of Azeri refugees
to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The first reason why this has happened is that Nagorno-Karabakh has
been driven out of the negotiating process. The second factor is the
illegitimacy of President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, who is forced
to make concessions in both the Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian-Turkish
processes in order to become lawful in the eyes of the international
community.

Almost all the forces constituting the ANC agree to resolution based on
mutual and equal concessions. "However, the present settlement program
is contrary to this principle and gives much more to Azerbaijan than to
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, i.e. Serzh Sargsyan accepts a scenario
that is in no way acceptable to the Armenian party and may even
question the very existence of Nagorno-Karabakh," Ter-Petrossyan said.