PRESIDENT SARGSYAN MENTIONS POSSIBLE RETURN OF KARABAKH TERRITORIES; OR DID HE?

2010/03/23 | 16:11

politics

If one is to believe Hurriyet Daily News, the RoA President Serzh
Sargsyan has publicly stated, probably for the first time, about
the possible return of territories in Karabakh once the people are
granted the right to self-determination.

Today’s Hurriyet reports that President Sargsyan, commenting
on the long-standing territorial dispute with Azerbaijan, said,
"When the people of Nagorno-Karabakh receive a real opportunity
to implement its right to self-determination and when practical
mechanisms of security and development are created, the return of
these territories to Azerbaijan may be viewed as a concession from
the Armenian side, provided, of course, that the corridor linking
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh is kept."

President Sargsyan, who is in Syria until Wednesday, also talked about
the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and that Official
Yerevan supported "peaceful solutions and dialogue to resolve the
dispute… without questioning and forgetting its history."

In an interview with Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper, Sargsyan said the
"genocide" resolution in the House Foreign Affair Committee is an
"internal affair of the United States, which we do not interfere with."

"We did not make the recognition of the Armenian genocide a
precondition for the establishment of Armenian-Turkish relations,
since we stand for the improvement of relations with Turkey without
any preconditions," Armenian Public Radio quoted Sargsyan.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad offered his country’s services in
helping establish normal relations between Armenia and Turkey while
hosting his Armenian counterpart Monday.

"Syria is ready to play a role… for the establishment of
Turkish-Armenian relations that can ensure normal stability and
security in the region," Bashar al-Assad told a joint news conference
Monday with President Sargsyan.