ROUNDTABLE IN STEPANAKERT: KARABAKH EXPERTS URGE RESPONSIBLE APPROACH FROM INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
By Naira Hayrumyan
ArmeniaNow
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17.05.10 | 12:40
Karabakh
Roundtable in Stepanakert: Karabakh experts urge responsible approach
from international community Governance is talent/an art which requires
skills. NONE of current authorities have these skills. They have
just the skills to mislead the public and secure there privileges
by very means! I admire all those who did fight for the foredoom
of Arstakh but all these doesn’t mean that Armenian people should
tolerate all kind of corruption and injustice by these oligarchy and
stupid authorities, wh…
Karabakh experts are looking for ways out of the impasse in the region
and new ideas were voiced during a roundtable discussion that was
recently held in Stepanakert upon the initiative of the NKR Public
Council on Foreign Policy and Security.
The participants of the forum entitled "Artsakh Settlement. Legal and
Political Aspects" first of all suggested calling on the international
community to show responsibility.
Manvel Sargsyan of the Armenian Center for National and International
Studies (ACNIS) thinks Nagorno-Karabakh has every reason to present
a claim to the international community concerning its recognition of
Azerbaijan while it refuses to recognize Karabakh. "This had grave
consequences, gave rise to aggression as a result of which 25,000
people were killed, hundreds of thousands were rendered homeless,"
said Sargsyan.
Experts noted that the only way to resolve the conflict is the
recognition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
"There are two ways of recognizing the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh
– either by the authorities of Azerbaijan or by the international
community," said lawyer Andrias Ghukasyan. "If the independence
of one state must be permitted by the authorities of another state,
then what compromise can we talk about? The political reality excludes
mutual compromises. In fact, the goal of the negotiations is to make
sure hostilities do not resume," said Ghukasyan.
It was also suggested that the international community has no right
to demand or expect from NKR unwarranted concessions either regarding
territories or the status of an independent state.
Based on the results of the roundtable a number of nongovernmental
organizations, representatives of the expert political science
community, mass media joined the appeal that the Public Council on
Foreign Policy and Security had earlier addressed to the Diaspora to
start the process of international recognition of NKR.
The roundtable participants noted also a tendency towards changing
the configuration of the conflict.
"The war was halted when two world blocs collided. Now, Turkey has
offered to start building relations with Armenia, open the border. So
far, Turkey has kept the border closed, but never said that the
Karabakh problem should be resolved in favor of Azerbaijan. Now it
has become an international condition being advanced by Turkey. In
other words, the international parameters of the Karabakh conflict
are being breached," said ACNIS’s Sargsyan.
The expert added that Azerbaijan is trying to convince everybody that
it has the right and possibility to resolve the Karabakh conflict
by force.
The Public Council also said that it intends to continue to express an
active position and advance new ideas, because it deems that Karabakh’s
passive position was a factor that contributed to the aggravation of
the conflict.