Author: Markos Nalchajian

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT TO PAY OFFICIAL VISIT TO GREECE IN NOVEMBER, 2005
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 10 2005
YEREVAN, October 10. /ARKA/. Armenian President Robert Kocharyan will
pay an official visit to Greece in November, 2005, the RA Presidential
Press-Service reported ARKA News Agency. This was stated at Kocharyan’s
meeting with newly appointed Greece Ambassador to Armenia Mrs. Panayota
Mavromichali, who presented credentials to the RA President. The sides
pointed out that this visit will be a new stimulus for development of
the Armenian-Greek relations. Kocharyan gave importance to bilateral
relations with Greece, as well as to cooperation within NATO and
the EU. In the context of Armenia-EU relations importance was given
to the elaboration of Action Plan for Armenia within the policy of
European Neighborhood.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EUROPEAN UNION FORMALLY OPENS TALKS ON TURKEY’S JOINING
By Craig S. Smith
New York Times
Oct 4 2005
LUXEMBOURG, Tuesday, Oct. 4 – After days of wrenching negotiations,
Turkey and the European Union held a brief ceremony here early Tuesday
that formally opened talks on Turkey’s bid to join the union.
The ceremony, which began just past midnight after an agreement was
reached late Monday, set in motion a process that would probably take
a decade or more but could end with the European Union’s extending its
borders eastward into Asia to embrace a predominantly Muslim country.
“This is a truly historic day for Europe and for the whole of the
international community,” said Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary,
who was chairman of the negotiations. He said Turkey’s entry “will
bring a strong, secular state that happens to have a Muslim majority
into the E.U. – proof that we can live, work and prosper together.”
Turkey has worked for more than four decades to join, restructuring
its legal system and economy to meet European standards even as Europe
added demands and refused to start formal negotiations.
The agreement on Monday to open the talks was a hard-won victory for
the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who
has staked his political credibility on getting them under way. He
hailed the beginning of talks, saying, “Turkey has taken a giant step
forward on its historic march.”
But the bitter struggle over the terms of the talks reflects Europe’s
deep ambivalence toward Turkey’s membership.
The talks come at a difficult time for the European Union, which is
mired in an identity crisis and whose consensus-based decision-making
process is already bogged down by the addition last year of 10 members.
Many Europeans – more than half according to some polls – oppose
Turkey’s membership, arguing that while the country has a toehold in
Europe, it is not European at its core. Critics say the union would
have difficulty absorbing such a large, poor country and complain
that Turkey’s membership would open the doors for a potentially huge
wave of Muslim immigrants.
By the time it could be expected to join, Turkey’s current population
of 70 million people would probably have grown to outnumber that of
Germany, now the largest European state. Under current rules, that
would give it the most seats in the European Parliament, skewing an
already complex European agenda.
The agreement to start the talks was held up until late Monday as
European members haggled over an Austrian demand that the talks include
an alternative to full membership, giving the union a diplomatically
palatable option to inviting Turkey to join.
Austria eventually dropped its demands, but an agreement was then
blocked by Turkey’s objections to language that it feared could
force it to support an eventual bid by the Greek-dominated Republic
of Cyprus to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Turkey
withdrew its objections after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
called Mr. Erdogan in Ankara to assure him that the negotiations with
Europe would not affect Turkey’s voting power in NATO.
Supporters of Turkey’s membership say the expansion would open
up a vast potential economic market to Europe. Other advocates,
including the United States, say bringing Turkey into the European
club would help spread democracy into the Middle East and increase
regional security.
That idea was echoed by Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, before
he boarded a plane in Ankara on Monday night to fly to Luxembourg.
“Once Turkey enters in the European Union, all these circles will also
see themselves, one way or another, represented within the E.U.,”
Mr. Gul said. He left Turkey late Monday night in order to attend
the ceremony here early Tuesday.
The squabble over talks with Turkey briefly held up consideration
of Croatia’s European membership talks, which had been frozen since
March over the country’s poor cooperation in arresting a fugitive
war crimes suspect. Austria had pushed for talks with Croatia to begin.
Late Monday, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes
tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, told European foreign ministers that Croatia
was cooperating fully – a sharp reversal of her assessment just a few
days earlier during a visit to the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Membership
talks with Croatia are now expected to start within days.
The last-minute diplomacy kept Mr. Gul waiting in Ankara and frayed
nerves on both sides.
“Either it will show political maturity and become a global power,
or it will end up a Christian club,” Mr. Erdogan said of the European
Union on Sunday.
It is just that question that is haunting Europe. The European project,
begun as a means to ensure peace among historic enemies, has faltered
since the end of the cold war, which helped define it. In the 15
years since German reunification, the union has grown but weakened
as it has absorbed much of formerly Communist Central Europe.
Deep differences within the union, particularly between its incoming
and longstanding members, broke into the open over the American-led
invasion of Iraq, which many of the new union members supported but
the older members did not. “Building a consensus is difficult if you
don’t have common values,” said Constanze Stelzenmuller, of the German
Marshall Fund in Berlin. “There has been a loss of focus, a loss of
the sense of commonality, a loss of common interests in Europe.”
Many people worry that adding a country with such a vastly different
cultural and economic heritage like Turkey’s to the mix would only
soften that focus further.
Meanwhile, economic malaise in much of Europe has made people wary
of the heralded “ever closer union” that for many simply means lost
jobs. Those fears helped defeat referendums on a proposed European
constitution in France and the Netherlands earlier this year, stalling
the union’s already slowing momentum and leading many opinion-makers
to question openly what it was that Europe wanted to become. Turkey’s
effort to become a member, which has continued in some form for more
than 40 years, naturally became central to that debate.
Turkey became an associate member of what was then the European
Economic Community in 1963 and formally applied for full membership
in April 1987. It was officially recognized as a candidate only in
December 1999, and it was not until last December that the union
agreed to set a date for membership negotiations to begin.
As part of its campaign to meet European standards, Turkey has
abolished the death penalty, improved its human rights record and
allowed broader use of the Kurdish language among its large Kurdish
minority. But it is criticized for refusing to explore the killing of
Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire and for refusing
to recognize Cyprus, which became a European Union member last year.
Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul for this article.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TIME
Oct 2 2005
Continental Divide
Some Europeans aren’t convinced Turkey belongs in the E.U. Their
opposition is helping Turkish nationalists keep Europe at bay
By ANDREW PURVIS
AP PHOTO / MURAD SEZER
PROTEST: A Turkish girl chants slogans as she makes a nationalist
gesture during an anti-EU rally in Ankara.

Kemal kerincsiz has a formidable intelligence. At Istanbul’s top law
school, he graduated with the best grades ever; now he is applying
his smarts to a different cause. He is fighting to stop his
motherland from joining the European Union. Kerinçsiz’s strategy is
simple: to try to block the reforms that the E.U. is imposing by
rallying Turkish nationalists to his cause. Late last month, by
seeking a last-minute injunction, he almost succeeded in shutting
down a conference on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915, one of
the most brutal episodes in Turkish history, and one which has never
been officially acknowledged by a Turkish government. The conference
went ahead following the personal intervention of the Prime Minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and sparked protests widely interpreted in
Western media as evidence of Turkey’s un-European behavior. But
un-European is something Kerinçsiz is proud to be. “History taught us
that we cannot trust these Europeans,” the lawyer, 42, told Time.
“Look at what happened in 1920: they divided up the Ottoman Empire,
even though they had pledged not to do that. People call us paranoid,
but we’re not.”
The mistrust is mutual. Since the E.U. officially invited Turkey to
start talks last December, European misgivings have deepened. Last
week, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel tried to insist on a
last-minute change to the terms of the negotiations to allow for less
than full E.U. membership. Much now hangs in the balance. Erdogan’s
political survival depends on talks going smoothly; if they fail or
encounter unexpected resistance, nationalists will gain at his
expense prior to elections in 2007. A new nationalist government
would be less friendly to Europe. And many believe that turning
Turkey away would send a dangerous signal to the Islamic world. “We
cannot afford to get this wrong,” British Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw said last month. The alternative of finding ways to bridge West
and East “is too terrible to contemplate.”
But there are real concerns in Western Europe over the wisdom of
welcoming into the E.U. a mostly Muslim nation of 70 million people.
A recent opinion poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Center
found that nearly two-thirds of French and Germans are opposed to
Turkey joining the E.U. The unease in Europe plays into the hands of
Kerinçsiz and other opponents of membership by making it harder to
sell unpopular reforms. “The rise of nationalism in Turkey has a lot
to do with Turkey’s internal dynamics, but it is being compounded by
the E.U.’s attitude,” says Hakan Altinay, head of the Open Society
Institute in Turkey. “We are being exposed to the pettiest side of
the E.U.”
Kerinçsiz belongs to an influential and increasingly vocal segment of
Turkish society, one that encompasses members of the military and the
judiciary, and which is vehemently opposed to E.U. membership and the
changes to Turkish law and customs that it would require. The aim of
these groups is not only to derail talks but also to discredit
Erdogan, accession’s most enthusiastic proponent. Many see his
concessions as a betrayal of Turkish national interests. “Tayyip
bey,” says Kerinçsiz dismissively, “has dug his own grave.” In the
runup to the E.U. talks, Turkey’s two main right-wing and nationalist
parties – which together form the main opposition to Erdogan’s
government – mobilized, bringing tens of thousands of sympathizers
onto the streets of several cities, including Ankara. These protests
grabbed attention in Turkey, but it was the case brought by a state
prosecutor against the world-renowned novelist Orhan Pamuk in August
that generated outrage beyond the country’s borders. The charge
against Pamuk – that he insulted Turkey’s good name by discussing the
mass killings of Armenians and Turkey’s Kurdish conflict in an
interview with a Swiss newspaper – carries a possible three-year
sentence. (In practice, Pamuk is unlikely to go to jail and the
publicity surrounding the case has embarrassed the government.) “No
country can shoot itself in the foot,” said Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul, ruefully, “like Turkey can.” The charges were brought by a
prosecutor aligned with nationalist causes. “These people will find a
reason, any time and anywhere, to be against this journey [toward
E.U. membership],” says Güler Sabanci, head of leading conglomerate
the Sabanci Group and one of Turkey’s best-known business leaders.
Opponents of accession are still in the minority in Turkey.
In polls, between 60-70% of Turks believe Turkey would be better off
in the E.U. But that number is dwindling, down at least 10% from just
one year ago, according to the German Marshall Fund. Moreover, 30% of
Turks now believe that their country will never join the club.
The E.U. has not made the process of accession easy, demanding a
range of reforms, some of which are deeply unpopular in Turkey – and
not just with nationalists. These include loosening restrictions on
the use of the Kurdish language, and on Kurdish media, even as a new
Kurdish insurgency is gaining momentum in the southeast.
Demands that Turkey recognize Greek-controlled Cyprus and changes
aimed at bringing Turkey’s penal code in line with Europe’s are also
controversial, seen by many as undermining the integrity of the
Turkish state. In a recent poll, 51% of Turks said that they now saw
the E.U.-inspired reforms as a repeat of the widely reviled 1920
Treaty of Sèvres, which led to the Ottoman Empire being dismantled by
foreign powers. “Turks are fed up,” says Haluk Cetin, a 30-year-old
nationalist activist and manufacturer of ice-cream-making equipment.
“Rising terrorism, economic hardship and now all this pressure from
the E.U. Turks are patient people, but once they reach boiling point,
anything could happen.”
Erdogan understands that his government is at risk from nationalists,
but he also has his own political constituents to cater to, many of
them in the prosperous conservative Muslim heartland of Anatolia.
They too are restive for change, having failed to see Erdogan deliver
on campaign promises like the lifting of a ban on head scarves in
universities and public offices. For them E.U. membership is a
potential guarantee against military rule and restrictive laws aimed
at curbing religious expression. Last week Erdogan heeded that base
and Turkey’s other pro-E.U. voices. He circumvented a local court
ruling, and hence enabled the conference on the Armenian massacres of
1915 to go ahead – the first meeting of its kind ever to be held in
Turkey. “There’s no turning back for [Erdogan] now,” says Altinay,
who attended the conference. “He’s burned his bridges.”
That’s the kind of toughness E.U. leaders want to see. As do many
Turks. “Turkey is committed to the E.U. path, not only for the sake
of becoming a full member, but essentially for itself,” says Sabanci,
adding, “The Turkey that will enter the European Union is not the
Turkey we have today.” But there’s still a yawning gap between that
putative future Turkey and today’s reality. The conference was the
first public discussion of a topic that has been taboo in Turkey for
more than 80 years. Participants included an 80-year-old former
minister, whose description of what happened to his home town of
Tokat – its Armenian population reduced in a decade from 8,800 to 700
– left many attendees in tears. “There was a real sense of moral
responsibility in the air,” says Altinay. “I’ve never experienced
anything quite as emotional as this.” Then he left the hall – and was
promptly showered with eggs and tomatoes by flag-waving protesters.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

YEREVAN SHOULD DISCUSS ASALA TERROR:
Turkish Daily News
Sept 27 2005
Turkish press yesterday
The controversial Armenian conference on the alleged massacre of
Armenians in the last century during the rule of the Ottoman Empire
ended on Sunday at Bilgi University. Views on the issue were freely
discussed, Hurriyet reported.
The paper noted that two Hurriyet readers asked the following question:
“What about our 32 diplomats, victims of the Armenian Secret Army for
the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), and the innocent Turks massacred
by Armenians? Will Yerevan hold a conference for our martyrs?”
ASALA is an Armenian group that was established with the stated
intention of compelling the Turkish government to publicly acknowledge
its alleged responsibility for the deaths of, according to ASALA,
1.5 million Armenians in 1915, and also for the Turkish government
to pay reparations and cede territory to Armenia.
Armenian terrorists killed Turkish diplomats in the 1970s. The
first victim in the series of terrorist attacks was Mehmet Baydar,
then Turkish consul general in Los Angeles, and his deputy Bahadýr
Demir. This individual action turned into organized Armenian terror
in 1975 and peaked in 1979. A total of 32 Turkish diplomats and four
foreign nationals were assassinated in these attacks, while 15 Turks
and 66 foreign nationals were wounded.
Here is an excerpt of a letter written to Hurriyet by Professor Cengiz
Kuday and businessman Cengiz Solakoðlu. The two Hurriyet readers said
they were pleased that the Armenian conference was held.
“We looked at what was discussed at the conference, yet this question
occupied our minds. Armenians always keep the events of 90 years ago
on the agenda; however, our 32 diplomat victims of ASALA and Turks
massacred by the Armenians are forgotten,” they said in the letter.
Milliyet reported that the second day of the twice-canceled conference
was quieter than the first. Participants easily entered the conference
hall since the protestors arrived late. Sessions were usually quiet,
but Hrant Dink’s story about an elderly Armenian woman in Sivas evoked
some tears.
In the meantime, Professor Ýlhan Cuhadaroðlu quit the conference
after accusing the participants of being one-sided.
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal
claimed that the conference was held to accustom the public to
Armenian theses.
Cumhuriyet quoted Baykal as saying that the court decision to ban
the conference was incorrect.
An Istanbul court had suspended the Armenian conference but the
organizers decided to hold it at Bilgi University instead of the
state-run Boðazici University.
“The end of a taboo,” headlined Yeni Þafak, commenting that Turkey
managed to confront its past and show the world that it has broken
one more taboo.
Professor Baskýn Oran said the Armenian question was the last unbroken
taboo in Turkey and added that the conference was an indicator of
the last taboo being broken.
–Boundary_(ID_sa/vexJnGY8ZEsx073aM2A)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Reuters, UK
Sept 24 2005
Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference
Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:26 AM ET
By Jon Hemming
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Hundreds of Turkish nationalists chanting
slogans and waving flags protested on Saturday against a
controversial academic conference on the World War One massacre of
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
The conference had been due to open on Friday at two universities in
Istanbul but a last-minute court order blocked it, causing acute
embarrassment to the Turkish government just days before the start of
its European Union membership talks.
Organisers circumvented the court ban by moving the conference on
Saturday to a third university in the city.
“This conference is an insult to our republic and to the memory of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,” Erkal Onsel, head of the Istanbul branch of
the leftwing but nationalist Workers’ Party, told protesters gathered
outside the private Bilgi University.
Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish Republic on the
ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Treason will not go
unpunished” and “This is Turkey, love it or leave it”.
The issue of the Armenian massacres is highly sensitive in Turkey.
Armenia and its supporters around the world say some 1.5 million
Armenians perished in a systematic genocide committed by Ottoman
Turkish forces between 1915 and 1923.
Ankara accepts many Armenians were killed on Turkish soil during and
after World War One, but says they were victims of a partisan
conflict that claimed even more Turkish Muslim lives as the Ottoman
Empire was collapsing. It denies any genocide.
But in a bid to defuse the issue, the government has opened up
Turkey’s archives to scholars, saying it has nothing to hide, and has
urged Armenia and other nations to do likewise.
The academic conference was originally scheduled for May but was
canceled after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused those backing the
genocide claims of “stabbing Turkey in the back”.
This time, with a nervous eye on Brussels as the clock ticks toward
the start of its long-delayed EU entry talks on October 3, the
government has strongly backed the conference.
The court banning order, announced on Thursday evening just before
the conference was due to start, drew swift condemnation from Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan as well as from the European Commission,
which spoke of a “provocation” by anti-EU elements.
“If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom
of thought,” Erdogan told a separate gathering of academics in
Istanbul on Saturday.
“I want to live in a Turkey where all freedoms are guaranteed,” the
prime minister said.
Lawyers behind the original court ban condemned Bilgi University’s
decision on Saturday to host the event regardless.
“We will file a legal complaint against all of those people behind
this conference,” lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz told Reuters.
The court blocked the conference pending information on the
qualifications of the speakers and also wanted to know who was
participating and who was paying for it.
Despite a flurry of EU-inspired liberal reforms in recent years,
promoting certain interpretations of Turkish history can still be
deemed a criminal offence under the revised penal code.
The protesters said the organisers of the conference were not really
upholding freedom of speech.
“They don’t let us inside… they don’t give us a chance to put our
case. They forget those of the Turkish nation killed by Armenians,”
said Kemal Ermetin, who runs a nationalist magazine.
The protesters displayed photographs of what they said were Azeris
killed by Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
during fighting in the early 1990s.
Turkey closed its border and cut diplomatic ties with tiny ex-Soviet
Armenia in 1993 to protest against Armenian occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh, part of the territory of Azerbaijan, a regional
Turkic-speaking ally of Ankara.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THERE ARE NOT ONLY OPPOSITIONISTS AMONG MALICIOUS ABSENTEES FROM
PARLIAMENT
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9. ARMINFO. Although the small session of the
Armenian Parliament is focused on only one issue – about the absence
of 24 deputies from the opposition Justice bloc and the National Unity
party from more than half of the parliamentary votings absent from as
many votings were also a number of businessman deputies.
Gagik Tsarukyan was absent from 171 votings, Mkhitar Varagyan from
125, Tigran Arsakantsyan from 157 ones. But their absence is
considered to have valid reasons as some of them were on mission,
others have health certificates, some asked the speaker to consider
their absence well reasoned. Strangely enough some other businessman
deputies like Levon Sargsyan, Ruben Hayrapetyan and others who could
hardly be seen at any parliamentary session so far are not on the
absentee list.
Meanwhile Speaker Artur Bagdassaryan and his deputy Tigran Torossyan
were absent from 89 votings because of working missions.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKISH SPEAKER WRITES TO FOREIGN PARLIAMENTS ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE
Anatolia news agency
7 Sep 05
Ankara, 7 September: Turkish parliament [Speaker] Bulent Arinc
sent letters to his counterparts in 16 countries which has adopted
resolutions on the so-called Armenian genocide allegations.
In the letters he sent to the Speakers of parliaments of Switzerland,
Poland, Slovakia, Lebanon, Canada, Argentina, Germany, Belgium, France,
the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Uruguay, Sweden, Russian Federation
and Venezuela, Arinc said: “We have nothing to hide or be ashamed in
our history.”
He expressed sorrow and disappointment about adoption of resolutions
accusing Turkey of carrying out a genocide, and said: “It is
unacceptable that the history be used as a tool for political
intentions that can cause prejudice against Turkey and Turkish nation.”
“Turkey has always argued that disputable chapters of history should
be assessed by historians, and therefore, has opened its archives
to all researchers. Recently, Turkey has proposed Armenia to form a
group composed by Turkish and Armenian historians who can examine
developments and incidents happened in 1915 within the related
archives. Turkey also proposed that this group should make public
the results of its researches,” indicated Arinc.
Arinc stated that national parliaments were not the places where
decisions on historical events can be taken, and added that parliaments
should in fact exert efforts to create and improve atmosphere of
friendship and cooperation among countries and peoples.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

REPRESENTATIVE OF ARMENIAN COMMUNITY OF TBILISI RUNS FOR VACANCY AT
GEORGIAN PARLIAMENT
YEREVAN, AUGUST 24. ARMINFO. Representative of the Armenian community
of Tbilisi Robert Haroutunian runs for vacancy at Georgian parliament.
As A-INFO informs, the elections for two vacant places by the majority
system at the Georgian parliament will take place on Oct 1. In
1992-1997 Haroutunian was the trade and economic representative of
Armenia in Georgia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN OPPOSITION MAY SUPPORT CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES – MP
Mediamax news agency
24 Aug 05
Yerevan, 24 August: The [opposition] Justice bloc believes that the
updated package of constitutional changes proposed by the ruling
Armenian coalition “is incomplete and does not meet the opposition’s
demands”, [MP] Shavarsh Kocharyan, a member of the parliamentary
faction of the Justice bloc, said in Yerevan today.
But it does not mean that the Justice bloc has already made a final
decision to say no to the constitutional changes, Kocharyan said. He
made it clear that the opposition may support the draft constitution
if the authorities meet some of the demands of the bloc.
Kocharyan called for the punishment of those responsible for
irregularities in the presidential and parliamentary elections in
2003 and urged criminal proceedings into those irregularities. He
described Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan, who headed the campaign
headquarters of [Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan during the
presidential election, as “the main falsifier of the election”.
Shavarsh Kocharyan also said that it is necessary to update the lists
of voters and ensure the independence of the media, specifically to
resume the broadcasts of the A1+ TV channel ahead of the constitutional
referendum in late November. The opposition also suggests ensuring by
the same time the balance in the compositions of electoral commissions,
in which the opposition has no decisive votes, he said.
The president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
Rene van der Linden, who recently visited Armenia as part of his tour
of the South Caucasus region, backs the opposition on these issues,
Kocharyan said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZG Armenian Daily #147, 20/08/2005
Karabakh issue
ALIYEV: STEP-BY-STEP REGULATION IS THE ESSENCE OF PRAGUE PROCESS
Ilham Aliyev, according to Azeri mass media, emphasized at a
yesterday’s meeting with journalists that the progress in Nagorno
Karabakh issue achieved in course of talks is significant but it
gives no guarantee for peace as “positions of the sides still have
serious differences.” The Azeri President noted that the essence of
the Prague Process is the step-by-step regulation; “occupied lands
should be liberated in the first phase”, then the sides can reach a
mutually acceptable decision in conflict regulation.
The Armenian side does not claim that the Prague Process suggests
step-by-step regulation. The foreign minister of Armenia stated on
December of 2004, “We tend to preserve the right of Artsakhi people
on self-determination and we can be flexible as regards deadlines of
final decision”. “The right of self-determination of Artsakhi people
should be documented. We shall struggle to the end and will not sign
any agreement without confirmation of that fact”, Vartan Oskanian said
adding that realization of self-determinacy should not necessarily
happen at once.
Comparing comments by Aliyev and Oskanian, we may conclude that Armenia
is ready perhaps together with Azerbaijan to eliminate all consequences
of the war in the first stage, i.e. to return controlled territories
and refugees, revive communication and discuss the final status of
Nagorno Karabakh in the second stage, which is to come in 10-15 years.
By Tatoul Hakobian
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress