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BAKU: 'Who Needs Armenia?'

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  • BAKU: 'Who Needs Armenia?'

    'WHO NEEDS ARMENIA?'

    news.az
    April 7 2010
    Azerbaijan

    Ilgar Mammadov Ilgar Mammadov, co-founder of the Republicanist
    Alternative (Re:AL!) Civic Union, comments on an article by Armenia's
    ex-foreign minister.

    When a person of such a high and honorable status as the first foreign
    minister of Armenia speaks out after a long break about the future of
    regional affairs and of his own country, one should listen carefully.

    Unfortunately, I have just read another example of wishful ethnocentric
    thinking: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_57 73.shtml

    Mr Hovannisian, you may continue in your belief that the myth about
    the 'genocide of Armenians' will be recognized by the majority of
    intelligent people of sober mind. Or that Azerbaijan will one day
    again donate another piece of its historic land to Armenia after
    the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from
    tsarist and Soviet Armenia in the 19th century, during Stalinist
    'collectivization', in 1948-1953, and 1987-1990.

    The reality is that Armenia is dying. Not only because, as you said,
    there is no rule of law, no true elections in your country, but mostly
    because Armenia is increasingly poor and irrelevant.

    Who needs Armenia? Your Russian metropolis? Its elite is currently
    in deep debate about whether or not Russia should retain sovereignty
    over the North Caucasus, not to mention its strong presence in the
    South Caucasus. A bunch of US congressmen with a famously idiotic
    view of the facts of history through their election funds? Or shop
    and boutique owners in downtown Buenos Aires?

    You can continue relying on all of these, although two decades of
    such reliance by your formally independent state have yielded nothing:
    as you perfectly know, in five to 10 years your country will be even
    further behind Azerbaijan and Georgia and Turkey - your ultimate
    friends and partners whom you look at as an envious neighbour. Stuck
    in the 19th century way of thinking, your country demands territory
    and 'justice' from all three of us under different pretexts and in
    different formats.

    The entire agenda that your nation's leaders have built for ordinary
    Armenians is just paranoid. You are experiencing severe depopulation,
    you have no money, you have no economy, your borders are under Russian
    control, your country became mono-ethnic, because sick ethnic pride
    in your society cannot accommodate minorities, and yet you - one
    would not expect it of a wise man - support the fantasies of your
    homegrown and transatlantic nationalists.

    Very disappointing. Very disappointing for me as someone who dreams of
    a South Caucasus without borders - from the Black Sea to the Caspian,
    a land of free trade, prosperity, cultural diversity and political
    freedom.

    Ilgar Mammadov Co-Founder Republicanist Alternative (Re: AL!) Civic
    Union.
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