DASHNAK OFFICIAL WARNS OF WAR IF AZERI, ARMENIA TALKS FAIL
Hurriyet Daily News
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Dashnak official warns of war if Azeri, Armenia talks fail
A deadlock in peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan might lead
to new conflicts in the region, warned a senior official from the
far-right Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Dashnaktsutyun Party.
While praising the international negotiators for their active role in
talks, Giro Manoian said that neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan now desire
to engage a new war. His warning came a day after the presidents of
Azerbaijan and Armenia held their fifth meeting for a peace agreement
in the Russian resort city of Sochi, as Moscow pushes the sides to
resolve their longstanding conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been occupied
by Armenian forces since the end of a six-year conflict that left
about 30,000 people dead and 1 million displaced before a truce
was reached in 1994. The region’s unilateral independence is not
recognized by the international community. The presidents of Armenia
and Azerbaijan have been negotiating on the issue under the OSCE,
but little progress has been made in the talks.
When reminded of the positive picture drawn on the solution to the
Karabakh problem in previous months, Manoian said he believed that
was done to mislead the public. He also said that Turkey perceived
the Karabakh problem differently than Russia, the United States
and other Western nations. "When a solution to the Karabakh problem
is mentioned, Turkey perceives it as returning the whole Karabakh
to Azerbaijan. However, Russia and the United States are aware of
the sensitivity of the problem," he told the Hurriyet Daily News &
Economic Review in an e-mail interview.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court recently published a decision affirming
the constitutionality of the protocol, angering Ankara because the
decision stipulated that the agreements must not violate a part of
Armenia’s declaration of independence that calls for recognition of
the deaths of Armenians in 1915 as "genocide."
According to Manoian, Turkey has tried to use the court’s ruling
for its own good. "[Turkey] is not genuine on normalizing ties with
Armenia. It is trying to build an image of a country that moves toward
consensus. That is all."