ARMENIA RETICENT ON NEW KARABAKH PEACE PLAN

Asbarez
Mar 18th, 2010

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on
Thursday refrained from publicizing Armenia’s position on international
mediators’ recently modified plan to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict. He also denied that Azerbaijan has largely accepted the
proposed peace deal.

The U.S, Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group submitted
what they call an "updated version" of the so-called Madrid Document
to the conflicting parties in December and January. The Armenian
government reportedly responded to it in writing last month.

Nalbandian discussed the matter with the mediators in Paris on
Tuesday. He seemed to downplay the significance of the still
unpublicized changes made by them in the document during a news
conference in Yerevan.

Asked whether those changes are acceptable to the Armenian side,
he said: "We have long said that we accept the Madrid principles as
the basis of negotiations and we are continuing negotiations on the
basis of the Madrid principles. The co-chairs have been submitting
working proposals, and all of them are being discussed."

In a joint statement issued late on Wednesday, the co-chairs also
declined to specify whether Yerevan has accepted their modified
peace proposals. They confirmed that the Paris meeting focused on
"the Armenian comments on the co-chairs’ latest formulations of the
Basic Principles for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict."

"The talks were held in a constructive spirit, and will be continued
during the forthcoming travel of the Co-Chairs to Yerevan and
Nagorno-Karabakh," added the statement.

According to Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, the
updated Madrid Document is acceptable to Baku "with a number of
exceptions." "Let Armenia declare whether or not it accepts this
variant so that we can decide what to do next," he said on Monday.

Nalbandian dismissed these statements as misleading, saying that the
Azerbaijani "exceptions" outweigh provisions acceptable to Baku. "When
you look at statements made by them in recent days you see that there
are more exceptions than things which they accept," he said. "There
are a dozen exceptions and one or two issues relating to consequences
of the conflict which they accept."

The top Armenian diplomat went on to again accuse Baku of seeking to
"distort the essence of the negotiating process." He described Baku’s
statements about the framework peace plan as "just a smoke screen."

"Azerbaijan has not been recognizing the Madrid Principles for a long
time and if at last Baku has decided to take the documents as a basis
for negotiations we can only welcome this fact," Nalbandian said.

Meanwhile, Mammadyarov on Thursday rejected the idea of holding
a referendum on self-determination in Nagorno-Karabakh, which
is reportedly a key element of the peace formula favored by the
mediators. "Under the Azerbaijani constitution, when it comes to the
country’s territorial integrity, a referendum should be held in the
entire territory of the republic and all of its citizens should take
part in the vote," he said, according to Regnum news agency.