ANC COORDINATOR: ARMENIA ACCEPTED PRINCIPLE OF AZERBAIJAN’S TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

NOYAN TAPAN
DECEMBER 4, 2009
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, NOYAN TAPAN. A terrible thing took place at
the Athens meeting of the Foreign Ministers, Armenia accepted that
the Nagorno Karabakh conflict should be settled on the basis of
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Armenian National Congress
Coordinator Levon Zurabian declaring this at a December 4 press
conference mentioned that Artsakh people’s self-determination is the
most important issue, and to raise it independent Armenia’s first
authorities placed the issue on OSCE’s agenda where Armenia had veto.

L. Zurabian reminded that under the first President many proposals
were also made with the content of the statement adopted in Athens
but the President used his veto.

And today, according to L. Zurabian, the Armenian authorities
mention that the signed document also has the principle of nations’
self-determination forgetting that Azerbaijan has been always ready
to solve that problem by that principle but within the framework of
territorial integrity, which means Karabakh’s high autonomy as part
of Azerbaijan.

Responding to journalists’ observation that L. Ter-Petrosian told
about Artsakh’s autonomy as part of Azerbaijan as early as in 1994
in his interview to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper L. Zurabian
mentioned that President’s all statements were aimed at ensuring the
military security then. In his words, with such statements the former
authorities ensured their victory, and the current authorities with
pompous expressions go to a defeat.

L. Zurabian refused to comment upon President Serzh Sargsyan’s speech
at the RPA last convention mentioning that the opposition is interested
not in the statements but in the actions of the authorities. "If
they do not release the 15 political prisoners their statements on
solidarity are not worth a penny," he noted.