BAKU WAITS FOR ARMENIAN RESPONSE TO MEDIATORS’ PROPOSALS

news.az
April 15 2010
Azerbaijan

Ilham Aliyev President Ilham Aliyev has said that Azerbaijan is waiting
for Armenia to respond to the OSCE mediators’ proposals for the basis
of Karabakh talks.

‘We have already approached the stage when the filthy, hypocritical,
deceitful policy of Armenia cannot continue. We are at the stage when
they must respond to the proposals of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk
Group,’ Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday at an extended sitting of the
cabinet meeting.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said on 29 March that
Armenia had adopted the OSCE’s Madrid principles as a basis for
negotiations two years ago and the updated principles remained
the same.

‘Sometimes we hear very unsophisticated and ridiculous statements from
Armenia that, if the problem is solved in Azerbaijan’s favour, there
will not be a single Armenian left in Nagorno-Karabakh. They should
not measure us by their own yardstick. Azerbaijani people will never
discriminate against other people. Our special characteristic is that
we, unlike Armenia, are not a mono-ethnic state, all the ethnicities
and peoples of all religions live as a single family. And Armenia is
probably the only country in the world, other than islands, to have
a population of only one ethnicity – Armenian,’ he said.

He recalled that throughout the years of negotiations, ‘the Armenian
side wanted to find a way out by different ways, sometimes leaving
the negotiations and sometimes frustrating them by dubious reasons
without warning, thus putting themselves in a ridiculous position’.

The Armenians would do anything to drag out the negotiating process,
Aliyev continued.

‘We have voiced our position. At the negotiations with the Armenian
president in November last year in Munich and at the subsequent
trilateral meeting in Sochi, held at the initiative of Russian
President Medvedev, Azerbaijan officially expressed its position that
the proposals submitted on the basis of the updated Madrid principles
are acceptable to us There are a few aspects that cause our concern.

‘With a few small exceptions these proposals must be taken as a basis
for the drawing up of a peace deal. Unfortunately, the Armenian side
has not yet voiced its position. According to the information that
we have, the additions they included to the proposals will throw us
back to the start of the process. And this is not acceptable either
for us or the Minsk Group co-chairs. Therefore, we were promised
that serious work would be done with Armenia during this period to
persuade them to accept the proposals,’ Aliyev said.

The Armenian foreign minister told a press conference a month ago that
the exceptions cited by Azerbaijan in its acceptance of the Madrid
principles ‘exceeded the number of clauses Azerbaijan agreed to’.

‘We are analysing the situation and processes in the region and
waiting for the Armenian response,’ Ilham Aliyev said yesterday.

‘Either they will give a positive response to the proposals of the
three countries – Russia, France and the United States – in which case
we will negotiate actively and start a new phase of negotiations and
work on the agreement. If they do not accept the proposals, I think
negotiations will be senseless.

‘Negotiations just for show are unacceptable to us. I have already
said at different stages that we will not hold negotiations just
for show. We will hold them as long as there is hope that they will
be productive. If we see that it is hopeless, the negotiations will
have to stop and a new stage will start in this process. It is too
early to say what this stage will consist of. Anyway, we are ready
for any scenario and are preparing for this so that we can respond
to the situation,’ the president said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress