KOCHARYAN REJECTED TER-PETROSYAN TOO
March 9 2015
"The Village Council records up to the UN records show" that Kocharyan
has ousted the Nagorno-Karabakh from the settlement process Recently, a
notable incident occurred in the political arena. After Ter-Petrosyan's
declared "political analysis" and "bourgeois-democratic revolution,"
ANC somehow bypassed the subject of Kocharyan's criticism, obviously
took a break in his once tactics of keeping the matter of his role on
March 1 issue heated. Even it comes to the point that on one occasion
Levon Zurabyan alarmed about the risk of loss of Kocharyan's property
stating the following, in case of being re-elected in 2013, Serzh
Sargsyan would be his best to expel major economic and financial
capacity possessing Gagik Tsarukyan and Robert Kocharyan from the
political arena. "Whoever is the head of the power, he possesses
the property. Therefore, the person who loses the power loses
of property too." On March 4, Kocharyan's press secretary issued
a clarification, which stated that Kocharyan put a full stop to
the ceasefire existing between Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan. The
motive of Kocharyan's spokesman's issued article was Ter-Petrosyan's
speech on March 1, in which he specifically said, "At the same time,
the Kocharyan administration allowed a more serious failure in the
foreign policy. Before that, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic being a
full member of the conflict was expelled from the settlement process,
and the right to self-determination of the people of Artsakh turned
into a subject of the Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial dispute". It
is noteworthy that in the March 1 rally, Ter-Petrosyan again evaded
the issue of Kocharyan's responsibility for March 1, probably sending
a message to Kocharyan with the expectation of becoming allies with
Kocharyan after expelling Tsarukyan from the political processes.
While Kocharyan, three days later after this speech, countered that
Levon Ter-Petrosyan has ousted Nagorno-Karabakh from the negotiations,
actually denying Levon Ter-Petrosyan's expectations. Basically, this
subject was just an excuse for Kocharyan to emphasize his denying
attitude towards Ter-Petrosyan. As for the "achievements" of Kocharyan
and Oskanyan in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process in 1998-2008,
it really is not a subject for discussion, because as said in the
famous work of the famous writer, "the village council records up to
the United Nations records show" that Nagorno-Karabakh was ousted
from the peace process during the years of their tenure. And it is
an irrefutable reality. Recall that in 1998, Kocharyan promised to
settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in package, in a "winning" way,
and had promised to establish an independent Nagorno-Karabakh on
the territory covering 8 thousand square kilometers, to the point,
without introducing this issue into the referendum and involving the
Karabakh into the negotiation process. But, later, it turned out that
Kocharyan and Oskanyan are even supporters for the Nagorno-Karabakh to
be annexed as a part of Azerbaijan as they had agreed and negotiated
around the offer of "Common state" acceptable for them (the version of
the "Common state" suggested during Kocharyan's tenure was published
in the press in 1998). To the point, this offer was submitted to the
Nagorno-Karabakh, and Stepanakert has also accepted it. After that,
Kocharyan entered into the talks of exchange of territories. In 1999,
Kocharyan signed the Charter for European Security at the OSCE summit
in Istanbul and recognized the primacy of the principle of territorial
integrity, and generally, after the 1998 change of government,
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict came out of the sphere of the right
to self-determination of the nations and turned into a territorial
dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is not all. One of the
"achievements" during the tenure of Kocharyan and Oskanyan was the
discussion of the idea for setting up a corridor that links Nakhchivan
to Azerbaijan though Meghri, this topic is widely discussed in the
Armenian press under the name "Meghri's option". The matter is about
the talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement in the city of Key
West, Florida, USA, on April 3-7, 2001, where, according to circulated
information, the question of Meghri was raised, the issue of providing
a corridor to Azerbaijan through Meghri was on the table. The round
of Key West talks was held under the auspices of the US Secretary
of State Colin Powell. It was then that the statements to surrender
the "occupied" territories without preconditions were circulated
extensively. The information following the Key West talks were as
follows: there are disagreements on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh that
were not squeaked through. It is known that the Key West "agreement"
was planned to be signed in the same year, in summer at the summit in
Geneva, but it just did not happen. "Robert Kocharyan himself expressed
a wish to present both Armenia and Karabakh in the talks. At some point
Nagorno-Karabakh walked out of the talks and currently both parties
should give their consent to its return. The day when Karabakhi people
participate in the wide-ranging talks will come. And the sooner, the
better," said the OSCE Minsk Group French co-chair Bernard Fassier
repeatedly mentioning this idea, in response to the complaints of the
Armenian side at the Rose-Roth Seminar of NATO Parliamentary Assembly
hosted in Yerevan in 2010 that Nagorno-Karabakh nowadays does not
participate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process. It
should be noted that the last Minsk Group plenary format talks were
held in Helsinki in April of 1997, in participation of the three
parties, after which, the co-chairs have submitted the three parties
written proposals. Kocharian, after coming to power, has ousted the
Nagorno-Karabakh from the talks process by his own personal decision,
while not Karabakh settlement proposals were submitted after October
27, 1999. After October 27, 1999, when Kocharyan was already at
the head of the sole government, no settlement suggestions were
made to Nagorno-Karabakh, which unambiguously shows Kocharyan's
and Oskanyan's consistent policy of ousting the Nagorno-Karabakh
from the talks. And generally, when it comes to Nagorno-Karabakh's
participating in the negotiation process, we need to understand what is
meant by involvement of the parties in the negotiation process. First
of all, this is a circumstance to present the settlement options
to the parties, and here, we must remind that in 1997, the package
and stage-by-stage options for the Karabakh conflict settlement were
presented to Armenia, Azerbaijan as well as to Nagorno-Karabakh. One
more remarkable episode. During the presidential elections campaign in
2003, everyone remembers the television dispute between the candidates
for the president - the Head of the People's Party of Armenia Stepan
Demirchyan and Robert Kocharyan, during which Kocharyan, in response
to Demirchyan's following accusation addressed to him that he ousted
Nagorno-Karabakh from the peace process, did not deny it, moreover,
he justified the righteousness of his four-year "tactics" as follows:
it is right that Armenia takes a greater commitment in the negotiation
process without Karabakh. So, with regard to existing irrefutable
facts, the "proof-reading" works of Kocharyan and his office, to put
it mildly, are ridiculous.
Emma GABRIELYAN
Read more at: http://en.aravot.am/2015/03/09/169165/
March 9 2015
"The Village Council records up to the UN records show" that Kocharyan
has ousted the Nagorno-Karabakh from the settlement process Recently, a
notable incident occurred in the political arena. After Ter-Petrosyan's
declared "political analysis" and "bourgeois-democratic revolution,"
ANC somehow bypassed the subject of Kocharyan's criticism, obviously
took a break in his once tactics of keeping the matter of his role on
March 1 issue heated. Even it comes to the point that on one occasion
Levon Zurabyan alarmed about the risk of loss of Kocharyan's property
stating the following, in case of being re-elected in 2013, Serzh
Sargsyan would be his best to expel major economic and financial
capacity possessing Gagik Tsarukyan and Robert Kocharyan from the
political arena. "Whoever is the head of the power, he possesses
the property. Therefore, the person who loses the power loses
of property too." On March 4, Kocharyan's press secretary issued
a clarification, which stated that Kocharyan put a full stop to
the ceasefire existing between Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan. The
motive of Kocharyan's spokesman's issued article was Ter-Petrosyan's
speech on March 1, in which he specifically said, "At the same time,
the Kocharyan administration allowed a more serious failure in the
foreign policy. Before that, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic being a
full member of the conflict was expelled from the settlement process,
and the right to self-determination of the people of Artsakh turned
into a subject of the Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial dispute". It
is noteworthy that in the March 1 rally, Ter-Petrosyan again evaded
the issue of Kocharyan's responsibility for March 1, probably sending
a message to Kocharyan with the expectation of becoming allies with
Kocharyan after expelling Tsarukyan from the political processes.
While Kocharyan, three days later after this speech, countered that
Levon Ter-Petrosyan has ousted Nagorno-Karabakh from the negotiations,
actually denying Levon Ter-Petrosyan's expectations. Basically, this
subject was just an excuse for Kocharyan to emphasize his denying
attitude towards Ter-Petrosyan. As for the "achievements" of Kocharyan
and Oskanyan in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process in 1998-2008,
it really is not a subject for discussion, because as said in the
famous work of the famous writer, "the village council records up to
the United Nations records show" that Nagorno-Karabakh was ousted
from the peace process during the years of their tenure. And it is
an irrefutable reality. Recall that in 1998, Kocharyan promised to
settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in package, in a "winning" way,
and had promised to establish an independent Nagorno-Karabakh on
the territory covering 8 thousand square kilometers, to the point,
without introducing this issue into the referendum and involving the
Karabakh into the negotiation process. But, later, it turned out that
Kocharyan and Oskanyan are even supporters for the Nagorno-Karabakh to
be annexed as a part of Azerbaijan as they had agreed and negotiated
around the offer of "Common state" acceptable for them (the version of
the "Common state" suggested during Kocharyan's tenure was published
in the press in 1998). To the point, this offer was submitted to the
Nagorno-Karabakh, and Stepanakert has also accepted it. After that,
Kocharyan entered into the talks of exchange of territories. In 1999,
Kocharyan signed the Charter for European Security at the OSCE summit
in Istanbul and recognized the primacy of the principle of territorial
integrity, and generally, after the 1998 change of government,
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict came out of the sphere of the right
to self-determination of the nations and turned into a territorial
dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is not all. One of the
"achievements" during the tenure of Kocharyan and Oskanyan was the
discussion of the idea for setting up a corridor that links Nakhchivan
to Azerbaijan though Meghri, this topic is widely discussed in the
Armenian press under the name "Meghri's option". The matter is about
the talks on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement in the city of Key
West, Florida, USA, on April 3-7, 2001, where, according to circulated
information, the question of Meghri was raised, the issue of providing
a corridor to Azerbaijan through Meghri was on the table. The round
of Key West talks was held under the auspices of the US Secretary
of State Colin Powell. It was then that the statements to surrender
the "occupied" territories without preconditions were circulated
extensively. The information following the Key West talks were as
follows: there are disagreements on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh that
were not squeaked through. It is known that the Key West "agreement"
was planned to be signed in the same year, in summer at the summit in
Geneva, but it just did not happen. "Robert Kocharyan himself expressed
a wish to present both Armenia and Karabakh in the talks. At some point
Nagorno-Karabakh walked out of the talks and currently both parties
should give their consent to its return. The day when Karabakhi people
participate in the wide-ranging talks will come. And the sooner, the
better," said the OSCE Minsk Group French co-chair Bernard Fassier
repeatedly mentioning this idea, in response to the complaints of the
Armenian side at the Rose-Roth Seminar of NATO Parliamentary Assembly
hosted in Yerevan in 2010 that Nagorno-Karabakh nowadays does not
participate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process. It
should be noted that the last Minsk Group plenary format talks were
held in Helsinki in April of 1997, in participation of the three
parties, after which, the co-chairs have submitted the three parties
written proposals. Kocharian, after coming to power, has ousted the
Nagorno-Karabakh from the talks process by his own personal decision,
while not Karabakh settlement proposals were submitted after October
27, 1999. After October 27, 1999, when Kocharyan was already at
the head of the sole government, no settlement suggestions were
made to Nagorno-Karabakh, which unambiguously shows Kocharyan's
and Oskanyan's consistent policy of ousting the Nagorno-Karabakh
from the talks. And generally, when it comes to Nagorno-Karabakh's
participating in the negotiation process, we need to understand what is
meant by involvement of the parties in the negotiation process. First
of all, this is a circumstance to present the settlement options
to the parties, and here, we must remind that in 1997, the package
and stage-by-stage options for the Karabakh conflict settlement were
presented to Armenia, Azerbaijan as well as to Nagorno-Karabakh. One
more remarkable episode. During the presidential elections campaign in
2003, everyone remembers the television dispute between the candidates
for the president - the Head of the People's Party of Armenia Stepan
Demirchyan and Robert Kocharyan, during which Kocharyan, in response
to Demirchyan's following accusation addressed to him that he ousted
Nagorno-Karabakh from the peace process, did not deny it, moreover,
he justified the righteousness of his four-year "tactics" as follows:
it is right that Armenia takes a greater commitment in the negotiation
process without Karabakh. So, with regard to existing irrefutable
facts, the "proof-reading" works of Kocharyan and his office, to put
it mildly, are ridiculous.
Emma GABRIELYAN
Read more at: http://en.aravot.am/2015/03/09/169165/