Edward Nalbandian’s statement and answer during the joint press
conference with the Foreign Ministers of Poland, Sweden and Bulgaria
14.12.2012
I would like to welcome Foreign Ministers of Poland, Sweden and
Bulgaria Rados³aw Sikorski, Carl Bildt and Nickolay Mladenov in
Armenia. I would particularly like to welcome Nickolay Mladenov who is
in Armenia for the first time. My Swedish and Polish counterparts have
previously been here.
Today, we have quite a large-scale bilateral cooperation, based on the
centuries-old friendly relations. We are cooperating on both bilateral
and multilateral levels.
In particular, I would like to mention about the Eastern Partnership
initiative, in the origins of which were Sweden and Poland, and
currently together with Bulgaria and other countries they play an
important role. We attach great importance to this initiative and very
important steps have already been taken in that direction.
We have already stated that we had great progress in the negotiations
over the Association Agreement, that we came close to its conclusion.
We achieved progress in the negotiations over the creation of a Deep
and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. We hope that these negotiations
will be completed by November of the next year, before the Eastern
Partnership summit to be held in Vilnius.
We have completed negotiations over the visa facilitation by the EU
and we are going to sign it in the next few days. It would provide a
great opportunity to the Armenian youth, students, cultural figures,
businessmen, and representatives of sport and other spheres to more
easily enter the EU countries.
We used the opportunity to discuss the upcoming summit in Vilnius, as
well and touched upon a number of international and regional issues.
I informed my colleagues about the negotiations over the settlement of
the Nagorno-Karabakh issue including the recent developments in the
peace process.
Thus, I would like to conclude my statement and pass the floor to
Polish Foreign Minister Rados³aw Sikorski.
Question, News.am: My question is addressed to the Armenian Minister
of Foreign Affairs. Minister Nalbandian, after the Dublin meeting, the
Azeri side is continually making statements accusing Armenia that the
five-sided statement was not adopted because of the Armenian side. How
would you comment those accusations?
Edward Nalbandian: I would suggest comparing the statements of the
Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Dublin and you’ll see
that everything stated by the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs is
in line with the statement of the heads of the Co-chairing countries’
delegations.
And what is the Azeri Minister saying? They are saying, they are
hearing. Let me recall that it is not the first time that the adoption
of five-sided statement failed. There were similar cases before. One
of the examples is the attempt to adopt a five-side statement in 2010
in Almaty. Yet, Azerbaijan was insisting on the importance, the
predominance of the principle of territorial integrity over the other
principles. The result was the failure of the adoption of a five-sided
statement. But there was a trilateral statement where the Co-Chairs
mentioned that all principles and elements proposed by the Co-Chairs
were conceived as an integrated whole and no principle can be
separated from the others, and no principle, no element can have
predominance over the others.
This time, the Azerbaijanis, for some reasons, did not want to have
all the three well-known principles – the non-use of force or threat
of force, self-determination and territorial integrity, even
mentioned. And what did they achieve? There was no five-sided
statement, but there was a trilateral statement where the Co-Chairs
mentioned about all those three principles. Moreover, Armenia welcomes
the statement made by the Co-Chairs in Dublin and we can make the same
statement.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
