DEFENSE ARMY OF NAGORNY KARABAKH REPUBLIC OCCUPIES JUST PART OF THE TERRITORY BELONGING TO ARMENIA BEFORE 1920: LOCAL EXPERT
ArmInfo
2008-11-25 17:05:00
ArmInfo. Defense Army of Nagorny Karabakh Republic (NRK) has occupied
only a part of the territory belonging to Armenia before 1920, Ara
Papyan, ex-Ambassador of Armenia to Canada, specialist in Oriental
Studies, historian, told media Tuesday.
‘There are real maps drawn up and published by Canadian specialists
that evidently show that the so-called "occupied territories", the
seven regions of the security zone around Nagorny Karabakh, were
part of Armenia before 1920. I’d like to emphasize that they belonged
neither to Azerbaijan nor to Karabakh, but to Armenia’, he said. Except
the two regions in the south of the present NKR – Zangelan and Fizouli,
the remaining territory including the upper and the lower Karabakh up
to Artsvashen and Gazakh previously belonged to Armenia’, Papyan said.
‘One should not forget that the same Artsvashen was not an Armenian
enclave in the territory of Azerbaijan before 1931 inclusive, since
it had a common border to Armenia. All the innovations of Azerbaijani
SSR after Karabakh and Nakhijevan were gifted to it by the decision
of the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party
in 1921 pursued one goal to reduce the territory of Karabakh splitting
it up into several administrative units’, Papyan said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
