BAKU DISMISSES ARMENIAN LEADER’S REMARKS

news.az
April 5 2010
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has
criticized remarks on Karabakh made by the Armenian president in an
interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.

‘Azerbaijan has never refused to grant the Armenians and Azerbaijanis
of Nagono-Karabakh the right to self-determination according to
international legal norms within the framework of the territorial
integrity of Azerbaijan. Therefore, in this case it is important to
note that Azerbaijan has never shirked its obligations,’ Azerbaijani
Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said today.

He was commenting on an interview given by Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan to Der Spiegel. Sargsyan said in the interview that the key
issue for a settlement of the Karabakh conflict was the right of the
people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination.

The Armenian president asked in his interview why Karabakh could
not be independent when the former Yugoslavian states had achieved
independence. Commenting on that statement, Polukhov said that
Yugoslavia, like the USSR, had collapsed due to historical events
and pointed out that Armenia had gained its independence at that time.

‘It is at the very least, therefore, politically incorrect to draw
parallels between Azerbaijan and Yugoslavia,’ Polukhov said.

Asked whether Armenia could be said to have undone progress on Karabakh
through these comments, Polukhov said that if this were the case,
Baku would expect to hear the official Armenian position from the
OSCE Minsk Group mediators.

‘Only then will it be possible to give our view on the issue,’ the
spokesman noted.

Meanwhile, the Armenian president’s spokesman, Armen Arzumanyan,
told Tert.Am today that Der Spiegel had promised to correct what he
described as inaccuracies in the weekly’s published version of Serzh
Sargsyan’s interview.

As of 10.00 GMT on Monday the interview could not be found in German
or Russian on Der Spiegel’s website.