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Armenia This Week - 10/25/04

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  • Armenia This Week - 10/25/04

    ARMENIA THIS WEEK
    Monday, October 25, 2004

    KOCHARIAN COMPLETES GEORGIA VISIT AMID TERRORISM SCARE
    Armenian President Robert Kocharian was on a three-day official visit to
    Georgia last week for talks with President Mikhail Saakashvili and other
    Georgian leaders. Kocharian's otherwise successful visit was marred when
    weapons were found in a Tbilisi music hall, where both Presidents were due
    for a jazz concert. Kocharian and Saakashvili went to the concert despite
    the find.

    Security guards discovered a sniper rifle and an AK-74 machine gun with
    ammunition at the "Ajara" music hall on Saturday, an hour before the
    Presidents were planning to arrive. Georgia's Interior Minister Irakly
    Okruashvili said that Georgian investigators were treating the case as
    attempted terrorism. The country's Ministry of State Security, which is
    conducting an investigation, has so far refused to comment. Deputy Speaker
    of the Armenian Parliament Tigran Torosian urged a thorough investigation,
    noting that it is so far unclear if either or both Presidents were targeted.


    Kocharian began his visit traveling by car the 120-mile road from Yerevan to
    the Georgian border, where he was met by Saakashvili. The two Presidents
    then continued by helicopter over the remaining 40-mile section of
    Tbilisi-Yerevan road, which is due to be repaired later this year.
    Transportation issues continue to top the bilateral agenda, with most of
    Armenia's surface trade with the outside world passing via Georgia's Black
    Sea ports and a smaller portion through the Georgia-Russia highway. That
    highway had been closed by Russia for almost two months after increased
    terrorist attacks in southern Russia, but according to a Georgian official
    was opened on the day of Kocharian's arrival in Georgia. Two days earlier,
    Georgia also allowed two buses and several trucks that had been stuck in
    South Ossetia to pass into Armenia.

    Last March, Saakashvili promised to improve Armenia-Georgian transportation
    routes and reduce tariffs for Armenian goods. While in Tbilisi, Kocharian
    noted improvement in the treatment of Armenian travelers by Georgia's
    traffic police. The tariff issue has yet to be resolved, however.
    Saakashvili also said that he was "indebted to the population of Javakheti,"
    a largely Armenian populated province, long ignored by Georgian governments.
    He promised to visit the province, when he succeeds in securing necessary
    foreign loans for re-building a dilapidated road between Javakheti and the
    Georgian capital. Last week, the two Presidents agreed on a cooperation plan
    for the province's development.

    Meanwhile, according to Arsen Ghazarian, the head of Armenia's main business
    association, Armenian companies were invited to bid on the Georgian ports of
    Poti and Batumi. Also last week, Georgia requested a resumption of Armenian
    electricity supplies as Tbilisi was again forced to ration electricity
    following an apparent diversion on one of its main power lines. These
    supplies have comprised a bulk of bilateral trade, which stood at $54
    million last year, under 3 percent of Armenia's total foreign trade.
    (Sources: Armenia This Week 1-16, 3-12, 10-18; Arminfo 10-21, 25; RFE/RL
    Armenia Report 10-21; Regnum 10-22, 24, 25)

    MAJOR U.S. CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON ARMENIA, REGION
    Leading Caucasus experts gathered at the University of Michigan (UM) last
    week for a four-day conference to discuss the state of affairs in that
    region and challenges it faces. The event was organized through the efforts
    of UM's Armenian Studies Professors Gerard Libaridian and Kevork Bardakjian.
    Prior to returning to the U.S., Libaridian served in President Levon
    Ter-Petrossian's administration between 1991-97.

    Nagorno Karabakh's Foreign Minister (FM) Ashot Goulian, Armenia's Deputy FM
    Ruben Shugarian, the U.S. State Department's Caucasus and Central Asia
    Director John Fox and Ambassador of Finland to the Caucasus Terhi Hakala
    were among the participants. According to press reports, Azeri Deputy FM
    Araz Azimov refused to participate after failing to exclude Karabakh
    Minister's presence. Azerbaijan was instead represented by former FM Tofig
    Zulfugarov and half a dozen students from around the United States.

    Former U.S., Russian and Turkish officials led a candid exchange on the
    reasons why efforts to achieve a Karabakh settlement have been a failure so
    far. They claimed that the parties to the conflict have not been ready for a
    resolution. Former Caucasus Director at the Turkish Foreign Ministry Omer
    Ersun said it was a mistake for Turkey not to establish full diplomatic
    relations following Armenia's independence in 1991, and that peace was not
    achieved due to disarray in Azerbaijan and policy disagreements in Armenia.
    Russia's former negotiator Vladimir Kazimirov accused the U.S. of
    prioritizing its own perceived interests over peace settlement.

    Armenia's former Karabakh envoy David Shahnazarian and several other former
    Ter-Petrossian administration officials also took part. (Sources: Ekho
    10-23; R&I Report 10-25)

    A WEEKLY NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY THE ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY OF AMERICA
    122 C Street, N.W., Suite 350, Washington, D.C. 20001 (202) 393-3434 FAX
    (202) 638-4904
    E-Mail [email protected] WEB http://www.aaainc.org

    "Nagorno Karabakh: Realities and Prospects for Development"
    Presentation of the NKR Foreign Minister Ashot Goulian
    at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
    October 19, 2004

    Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

    It is a great honor for me to address the Center for Strategic and
    International Studies (CSIS), an institution known worldwide for its work on
    issues of global concern and particularly on international security.

    When contemplating the state of present-day South Caucasus, the
    international community, including American policy-makers and policy
    analysts, frequently express anxiety about stability and security in our
    region. Establishment of normal civilized relations between Nagorno Karabakh
    and Azerbaijan is, without a doubt, a necessary condition for the long-term
    stability and security in the South Caucasus. For these reasons, the
    attention you are granting me and the people of Nagorno Karabakh that I
    represent is especially worthwhile. That is even as the entire United States
    and much of the world are preparing to hold their breath over the
    unnervingly close context in the Presidential elections, just two weeks
    away.

    The South Caucasus today is region of competing geopolitical and
    geo-economic visions and designs. It would seem that the attention accorded
    by great power interests would contribute to the region's stability.
    However, with the long-running conflicts still unresolved, the region
    remains a powder keg and any misstep might risk turning it into an area of
    chaos and instability. Any conflict resolution effort in the South Caucasus,
    particularly in Nagorno Karabakh, demands careful analysis and consideration
    of all local interests.

    In the past 15 years, a number of delegations, among them American diplomats
    and members of Congress, as well as regional experts, have visited Nagorno
    Karabakh, met with its leaders and public in an effort to understand the
    conflict and its roots. For our part, it was a pleasure to hear that the
    approach we have adopted - to build a statehood based on democratic
    institutions and respect for human rights - corresponds to their vision of
    what our region should look like.

    It can be argued that the violation of human rights and the rights of a
    whole nation were and are precisely the factors at the root of the Nagorno
    Karabakh conflict.

    I would like to remind you that the Nagorno Karabakh issue first became an
    international problem in 1918 after the fall of the Russian Empire and as
    newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan began to demarcate their borders.
    Karabakh was at the time internationally recognized as a disputed area.

    But in the end through a decision of a political party organization of a
    third state - the Caucasus bureau of the Russian Communist Party - the
    overwhelmingly Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh was denied its
    natural territorial and national unity and transferred to Soviet Azerbaijan.

    Through the entire period of this forced and unnatural incorporation, the
    rights of the Karabakh Armenians were systematically violated by the Soviet
    Azerbaijani government. In spite of this pressure, the local population
    continued to defend its right to free development and preservation of its
    unique culture.

    A new stage of the movement for Karabakh's freedom began at the end of 1987,
    with massive meetings and demonstrations involving tens of thousands of
    local people. These actions of the Armenian population were strictly
    peaceful and constitutional in nature. Unfortunately in response, the Soviet
    Azerbaijani leaders tried to provoke inter-ethnic clashes. Azerbaijan
    responded to Karabakh's democratic demands with pogroms and mass murders of
    ethnic Armenians throughout Azerbaijan, including in Sumgait, Ganje and
    Baku, and a complete blockade of Nagorno Karabakh, which remains in effect
    today. An all out war was unleashed in 1991, which continued until 1994,
    when in May of that year a cease-fire agreement came into effect and
    continues to hold to date.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began to deal
    with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in 1992, when the present format of the
    peace process was established. While giving due credit to the OSCE and its
    Minsk Group for all of their efforts towards resolution of this long-running
    conflict, I would nevertheless have to note that in seeking a political
    settlement of the conflict, the mediators have paid little attention to the
    legal aspects of the issue. All through the peace process, Nagorno Karabakh
    leaders repeatedly stressed that the basis for our separation from Soviet
    Azerbaijan in 1991 was so legally sound that it could provide an important
    foundation and support to an eventual political settlement of the conflict.

    The establishment of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) was declared on
    September 2, 1991, shortly after Azerbaijan announced its own independence,
    in full conformity with basic norms and principles of international law.
    Creation of NKR did not contradict the "Declaration of re-establishment of
    the state independence of the Azerbaijan republic," since Azerbaijan was
    re-established in the framework of the 1918-20 republic, which did not
    include Nagorno Karabakh.

    NKR's independence was supported by a popular referendum, in which the vast
    majority of Karabakh's population voted for complete independence from
    Azerbaijan, whose leaders had in turn proclaimed their independence from the
    USSR. That referendum was conducted on the basis of the Soviet law "On the
    procedure of secession of a Soviet Republic from the Union of Soviet
    Socialist Republics." Article 3 of that law demanded that should a republic,
    such as Azerbaijan, decide to leave the Soviet Union, autonomous entities
    and compactly settled national minorities, such the Nagorno Karabakh
    Autonomous Region and adjacent Armenian-populated districts, have a right to
    decide their own legal and political future through a referendum.

    Negotiations with participation of mediators began just as the major
    fighting was getting underway. The Nagorno Karabakh leadership participated
    in these negotiations from the beginning, pursuing two major goals: to stop
    the bloodshed and to convince the international community that subordinating
    Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan was impossible. Our principle and position
    from day one and to date is that there is no alternative to a peaceful
    settlement of this conflict.

    As you know, the current stage of the peace process is not marked by
    intensive negotiations. Recent meetings between Presidents of Armenia and
    Azerbaijan, as well as their Foreign Ministers, certainly facilitate the
    peaceful dialogue. However, as the most recent meetings in Prague and Astana
    confirmed, not much progress has been made in terms of content of these
    talks. Moreover, considering the recent unfortunate experience with the
    Paris and Key West negotiations, when Azerbaijan disowned principles reached
    at those talks, we are not overly optimistic about Azerbaijan sticking to
    whatever new approaches we may agree on. A logical question is therefore
    should the parties agree to another set of principles, would they share the
    fate of Paris and Key West principles.

    Regarding our own participation in negotiations, our position is clear -
    Nagorno Karabakh cannot remain outside the process of settlement that
    relates directly to its own fate. Mediators recognize this quite well and
    they continue to insist on Karabakh's participation in the process. Only
    with Karabakh's participation, can these negotiations become truly effective
    in the way of achieving the soonest and most viable settlement. I would
    recall that the May 1994 cease-fire agreement, which marked the most
    tangible progress towards resolution of the conflict so far, was achieved
    with direct participation of Nagorno Karabakh as a full party to the talks
    that undertook and delivered on a set of commitments in terms of
    establishment and preservation of the cease-fire regime.

    We are also convinced that a successful continuation of the peace process
    depends on stability in our region, which in turn is the sum of stable
    conditions in all of the regional entities. In the years of independence, we
    have succeeded in creating a functioning and politically stable state and
    society, which is perhaps one of the most successful in the Caucasus. We now
    have an established state institution including a legitimately elected
    Parliament and President that enjoy popular confidence and command influence
    throughout Karabakh. The Army of Defense of Nagorno Karabakh, which
    protected our people from Azerbaijani aggression, today is under civilian
    control and serves as the main and real guarantor of the security of our
    statehood and our people.

    Additionally, Nagorno Karabakh has embarked on the way of reform aiming to
    establish a market-based economy. This is in spite of the estimated
    multi-billion dollar damage the war caused our infrastructure. Due to
    fighting, and especially due to Azerbaijan's indiscriminate aerial and
    artillery shelling, close to half of all of Karabakh residents lost their
    homes, that is more than 18,000 private houses and apartments; destroyed
    also were some 200 schools and kindergartens, about 170 healthcare
    facilities, close to 85 percent of our manufacturing capacity and hundreds
    of other facilities.

    To rebuild and, at the same time, reform our economy, we had to rely mostly
    on our own resources, long-term credits from Armenia and humanitarian aid
    from our Diaspora. We did not just survive. We have established a legal
    system that regulates economic relations, which allows us to make a gradual
    and balanced transformation to a market economy. We have completed
    privatization of land and small and medium enterprises. Today, Karabakh has
    become an attractive place to work for foreign investors, thanks both to our
    natural riches and liberal tax laws, as well as our stability and security
    of investments.

    Just in the past four years, foreign investments in Karabakh have twice
    exceeded the size of our budget, resulting in the overall economic recovery
    and development. Today, the private sector makes up for 80 percent of our
    industrial output, while that figure was only 20 percent in 1999, just five
    years ago. Major foreign investment programs have focused on mining (which
    we did not even have in Soviet days), agribusiness, communications, tourism
    and other services.

    Using this opportunity, I would like to again extend our gratitude for the
    humanitarian assistance from the United States, which since 1998 has helped
    the victims of war in Nagorno Karabakh. This assistance is allocated through
    the USAID and its non-government contractors. The first portion of this
    assistance in the amount of $20 million has already been spent. The second
    stage of the program, worth $15 million, is currently underway. The funded
    projects include restoration and construction of pipes for drinking water,
    healthcare facilities, micro-financing and de-mining. This assistance has
    eased the lives of thousands and I would like to assure you that every
    tax-payer dollar allocated by Congress to Karabakh has served its intended
    purpose.

    Confident of the international community's desire to establish stability and
    viable peace in our region and interest in the development of the South
    Caucasus, we have always been ready for dialogue to achieve these goals. We
    remain committed to this constructive approach today, even though we have
    yet to see reciprocity from our counterparts in Azerbaijan. Specifically, a
    set of confidence-building measures (CBMs) in the conflict area, which our
    leadership proposed in 2001, was rejected by Azerbaijan, even as the U.S.
    Congress repeatedly offered to fund such measures. These CBMs are designed
    to establish basic cooperation between Azerbaijanis and us, even before the
    final settlement of the conflict. One example is water resources sharing
    that could potentially benefit both sides and require only modest finances.
    Such CBM's remain of utmost importance considering the near total absence of
    mutual trust and recently stepped-up militarist rhetoric in Azerbaijan.

    The Azerbaijani leadership, while avoiding all contact with Nagorno
    Karabakh, goes as far as to try to prevent any contact between
    non-government organizations and even individuals. Azerbaijani peace
    activists who have visited Nagorno Karabakh have been harassed and assaulted
    upon their return to Azerbaijan.

    Capitalizing on Nagorno Karabakh's absence from international organizations,
    Azerbaijan tries to discredit us through baseless accusations and
    insinuations. There is really no limit to their propagandistic zeal. To
    believe our opponents, Karabakh is straight out of the Mad Max movies, with
    chaos reining, nuclear waste buried from around the world, slaves traded,
    terrorists roaming free and illicit drugs plentiful. Even though it is
    well-documented that it was Azerbaijan that enlisted the forces of chaos and
    xenophobic hatred, such as the international terrorist Shamil Basayev and
    radical Afghan mercenaries that later made up the core of the Taliban, in
    its war against us in the early 1990s.

    We have repeatedly requested that international organizations and
    governments, including the United States, send monitoring groups to Karabakh
    to study on location the baseless allegations made by Azerbaijani officials.
    Not surprisingly, Azerbaijan for its part does all it can to prevent such
    visits.

    The goal of the Azerbaijani government is to maintain a verbal smokescreen
    over Karabakh so that the international community and Azerbaijan's own
    citizens remain ignorant of Karabakh's realities particularly that Karabakh
    is well ahead of Azerbaijan in terms of democratic development. At the same
    time, Azerbaijan also tries to avoid exposure of the baseless nature of its
    accusations. In this regard, we would like to see a principled position of
    foreign governments and international organizations, which, we are certain,
    are interested in objective information out of Karabakh.

    The United States, in particular, as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and
    a country playing a leadership role around the world, certainly realizes the
    importance of building mutual confidence in the region and are capable of
    influencing the Azerbaijani leadership so that it backs off its military
    threats, works towards promotion of tolerance within their country and
    eventual peace throughout our region.

    Today, we are witnessing the formation of an open society in Nagorno
    Karabakh. We have the necessary legal framework and political climate for
    continued democratic development. Since the declaration of independence in
    1991, we have conducted several presidential, parliamentary and local
    elections, which were observed and positively evaluated by independent
    observers, including monitors from the United States. Most importantly, this
    is a reflection of the commitment of our people to democratic principles and
    our will to move forward as an independent state.

    Our position on the peace process and foreign policy in general is based on
    the fact that we are representatives of a democratically elected government
    of Nagorno Karabakh, whose purpose is to serve and, most basically, provide
    security to our citizens.

    Democratically developing Nagorno Karabakh cannot be subordinated to an
    Azerbaijani state, with its wholesale violation of the rights of
    Azerbaijanis themselves and its history of genocidal policies against
    Armenians. The Azerbaijani government, which has made not even a single
    positive gesture towards Nagorno Karabakh since this conflict began, makes
    it abundantly clear that Nagorno Karabakh's independence from Azerbaijan has
    no alternative.

    Our position is also based on realities of the world today. We believe that
    the international community can serve as a guarantor of Nagorno Karabakh's
    existence and security of its population by recognizing Nagorno Karabakh
    Republic as a subject of international law. The non-recognition of NKR is
    frequently explained by reluctance of setting a precedent. But these
    precedents have already been set. New trends in international relations show
    that nations that are forcefully incorporated into newly-established states
    and suffer from pressure from central - in fact, colonial, - undemocratic
    governments, have a natural right for a separate existence. We have seen
    this in East Timor and Eritrea. Finally, in Kosovo it took the U.S.
    leadership to stop ethnic cleansing and attempted Genocide and to establish
    a de-facto independent entity, something, we as a nation succeeded in doing
    almost exclusively on our own.

    Based on this fundamental right, we will continue to seek international
    recognition of NKR's independence. Our demand is legally sound and is
    grounded on a simple human desire to live freely in peace and dignity. We do
    not want what is not ours but we can not compromise on our basic right to
    exist. In this effort we count on the understanding of the international
    community, which is, without a doubt, interested in the long-term stability
    and security of the South Caucasus. It is by taking into account the rights
    and fundamental interests of all nations of our region, including Armenians
    in Karabakh, that this important goal can be reached.

    Thank you for your attention.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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