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Karabakh Precedent For Small Sovereign States

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  • Karabakh Precedent For Small Sovereign States

    KARABAKH PRECEDENT FOR SMALL SOVEREIGN STATES

    PanARMENIAN.Net
    18.04.2008 19:19 GMT+04:00

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/ Long before Kosovo was on the international agenda,
    it was mountainous Karabakh that challenged Stalin's legacy and offered
    a constitutional, juridical and legal reversal of that legacy through
    a referendum, member of Armenian delegation to PACE, Heritage party
    leader Raffi K. Hovannisian said in his address to PACE spring session.

    "It was the first step in the decolonisation of the Soviet Union and
    it is in this forum that one day an Azerbaijani colleague will stand
    up and say that responsibility is collective. When we talk about
    refugees and internally displaced persons and about territorial and
    security issues and suffering, the issues belong to all of us and not
    to any of us separately. Maybe they will say that we, too, erred in
    launching a war of aggression against Karabakh's liberty instead of
    talking to its leaders and its people. Maybe that day will come to
    pass, beginning here, in this Chamber," he said.

    "Despite the war of aggression unleashed upon mountainous Karabakh
    by Azerbaijan - a conflict that has cast untold loss, suffering and
    destinies of displacement upon hundreds of thousands of human beings
    on both sides - neither Karabakh nor any Armenian delegates have
    ever abused that pain for the repeated assertion of polemical and
    devious arguments relating to refugees, internally displaced persons,
    "occupied" territories and a variety of other familiar talking
    points. Its manifest, therefore, that the true precedent for small
    contemporary sovereignties is indeed mountainous Karabakh."

    "The case in point is mountainous Karabakh or Artsakh which, on the eve
    of the Berlin Wall's fall into history and long before Kosovo became
    current, heralded a new era of liberty, legality and democracy for the
    republics and other administrative entities of the Soviet Union. The
    citizens of Karabakh spearheaded the decolonisation of the Union
    of Soviet Socialists Republics by declaring their independence in a
    referendum held in strict compliance with international and controlling
    Soviet laws. In determining to master their future they triggered the
    long-overdue process of democratic correction of Stalin's legacy,
    which continues to haunt many freedom-loving people to this day,"
    he said, PACE communication unit reported.

    According to Heritage party's press office, Mr Hovannisian will
    leave Strasbourg for Serbia and Kosovo to participate in the NATO PA
    regional mission.
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