ARMENIAN NATIONALIST POLITICIAN CLOSES DOORS ON DIALOGUE

Hurriyet Daily News
May 2 2010
Turkey

Claims of sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh are threatening to
draw Armenia and Azerbaijan into a new conflict at the slightest
provocation.

Although international peacemakers are actively working to settle the
disputes, political experts are worried that the slightest wrong step
could fuel antagonism between the two parties.

Manvel Sargsian, who organized the Karabakh movement against Azerbaijan
in Yerevan in 1987, told the Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review
that Russia was fueling the problem by "supporting the Azeris" in
the policy to "remove the Armenians from the region."

Sargsian was Armenia’s Nagorno-Karabakh representative after the
armed clashes came to an end in 1994.

The Armenian politician also said it is not possible for Armenia
to make "the smallest concession" in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,
comments that show how mired the region’s problems are in nationalism.

Blaming Turkey due to preconditions

Noting that Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 because
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Sargsian said Turkey is "imposing
preconditions" on the reopening of the border. "Karabakh cannot be
a precondition in the [Turkey-Armenia] border issue," he said. "Not
the smallest piece of land can be sacrificed."

The nationalist politician also had a different view on the Khojaly
massacres, in which hundreds of ethnic Azerbaijani civilians were
killed Feb. 25 and Feb. 26, 1992, during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The
Armenian politician claimed Aziz Muttalibov, the former president
of Azerbaijan, had himself said the massacre was committed by the
"Azerbaijani opposition."

"The bodies of innocent Azeris murdered by the soldiers in the city
of Agdam city 15 kilometers away were carried away to Khojaly by
those soldiers themselves," Sargsian said.

Azerbaijan, along with the Memorial Human Rights Center, Human Rights
Watch and other international observers, say the massacre was committed
by ethnic Armenian armed forces.

These international sources also say the killings were carried out
with the help of Russian soldiers in the region. The official death
toll provided by Azerbaijan stood at 613 civilians, of whom 106 were
women and 83 were children.

"Everyone in Turkey says Russians aided the Armenians, but this is
a lie," said Sargsian. "On the contrary, they helped the Azerbaijanis.

We supplied our weapons from the Tashnaks."

Sargsian insisted on Russia’s role in the present stalemate in
Nagorno-Karabakh, claiming that the Soviet Union had strived hard to
remove Armenians from the region, thus fuelling the conflict.

Saying that during the conflict, Russian forces handed over Armenian
civilians to Azerbaijan, Sargsian claimed the number of such civilians
had reached 700 by the end of the clashes.