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Armenia pessimistic over Karabakh solution to territorial claim

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  • Armenia pessimistic over Karabakh solution to territorial claim

    eTaiwan News, Taiwan
    Nov 17 2004

    Armenia pessimistic over Karabakh solution to territorial claim

    2004-11-17 / Reuters /

    A top Armenian official said he was losing hope for a solution to the
    long and bitter territorial dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan which
    he accused of trying to negotiate through blackmail.

    Rival claims have hung over tiny, mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh from
    the early Soviet era.

    An ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan, it was the scene of one
    of the bloodiest of the ethnic wars that broke out in the ashes of
    the Soviet Union.

    "I'm not very optimistic about this issue," defense Minister Serzh
    Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview late on Monday. "I do not see
    anything serious (in negotiations) from our neighbours."

    An estimated 35,000 people were killed and some one million refugees
    fled to Azerbaijan where they remain.

    Thousands of ethnic Armenian refugees also fled to Armenia. A truce
    was agreed in 1994 but there has been little movement to end the
    dispute, despite international mediation.

    Sarksyan said that when the two presidents met earlier this year,
    both leaders had sounded hopeful about the chances of a peaceful
    resolution. Then, he said, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev tried to put
    pressure on Armenia through the United Nations.

    "Are they trying to make us calm down and (also) trying to press us
    through the United Nations? We don't understand it," said Sarksyan,
    seen as President Robert Kocharyan's closest political ally and his
    potential successor.

    "In this very important issue, both parties must be honest, to make
    the other side hopeful of a good solution. But if one of the parties
    is coming to the negotiations hiding his hand behind him with a stone
    in it, that is not negotiations.

    "Today, we just have to find a compromise. The time has long past for
    making hints. Now is the time for speaking directly," he said.

    He added: "From (Armenian) society, there is no great pressure to
    solve this through compromise. But I think that the issue can only be
    solved through compromise."

    Looking for a compromise

    In an October interview with Reuters, Aliyev said time was running
    out to resolve the issue, one of a handful of so-called frozen
    conflicts left over from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Aliyev
    warned that Azerbaijan would not wait forever, nor would it ever give
    up its claim to the region.

    But Sarksyan, himself from Nagorno-Karabakh and who led troops in the
    conflict, said he saw no signs that conditions were being readied for
    fighting to start again.

    Armenia was prepared to discuss handing back a buffer zone on the
    border with Azerbaijan, treating the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as a
    separate issue if three key principles are held to.

    Those are that Nagorno-Karabakh never be subordinated to Azerbaijan,
    that it would not remain an enclave and that it would get guarantees
    of security.

    Armenia's hold over Nagorno-Karabakh is not internationally
    recognised and, analysts say, has been a drag on the economy by
    blocking trade relations and trade routes with oil-rich Azerbaijan
    and neighbouring Turkey.

    "Obviously, we are ready to negotiate on the security zone. That is
    the most realistic. We are in a position to speak about compromises.
    The Azeris do not have anything. They say 'we are also ready for
    compromise'.

    "Ask them: what compromise? They say 'give everything back including
    Nagorno-Karabakh and after that we will not start hostilities.' That
    is not compromise, that is blackmail," Sarksyan said.
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