STEPANAKERT MUST BE PART OF KARABAKH SETTLEMENT PROCESS – DASHNAKTSUTYUN
Interfax
Dec 4 2008
Russia
Baku and Yerevan may meet each other halfway at the Karabakh settlement
negotiations, yet Stepanakert must be a party to the settlement
process, the Dashnaktsutyun party, a member of the Armenian ruling
coalition, told Interfax on Thursday.
"The Bureau of the Dashnaktsutyun Armenian Revolutionary Federation
in Lebanon said that a lasting settlement of the Karabakh problem was
possible only through peaceful negotiations involving the Karabakh
side," the party noted.
"As Azerbaijan did not quit its militant rhetoric after the signing
of the Moscow declaration on Karabakh, it is extremely important to
keep the issue on the national agenda as a super important security
goal of Armenia and the entire Armenian community," the party said.
The negotiations must be based on self-determination of the Karabakh
people through the independence referendum of 1991 and the Karabakh
constitution referendum of 2006, the party said.
"Mutual concessions can be only equal and simultaneous and add to
the integral solution," the party said.
The party wants Armenia and Turkey to continue the settlement of
bilateral relations.
"Turkey has not taken a single positive step. On the contrary, it is
trying to use bilateral contacts for the prevention of recognition
of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. In addition,
Ankara conditions relations with Yerevan on a relationship between
Armenia and Azerbaijan," the party said.