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Armenia's Ex-FM On Armenian Side's Untimely Concessions

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  • Armenia's Ex-FM On Armenian Side's Untimely Concessions

    ARMENIA'S EX-FM ON ARMENIAN SIDE'S UNTIMELY CONCESSIONS

    tert.am
    28.06.12

    Armenia's ex-FM, MP of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) Vartan
    Oskanian left a message on his Facebook page, addressing the current
    trends in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

    A statement by Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign
    Affairs and Security Policy, is actually the reason for Mr Oskanian's
    message.

    Mrs Catherine Ashton pointed out the vital importance of progress in
    the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process for full realization of Armenia's
    potential for political and economic integration with the European
    Union (EU). She called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to step up their
    efforts to achieve an agreement.

    Mrs Ashton's statement followed that by the presidents of the OSCE
    Minsk Group co-chairing nations at the G20 Summit in Los Cabos,
    Mexico. The diplomatic wording of that statement was, as Armenia's
    first president noted in his latest speech, rather strong and
    essentially different from the ones made in L'Aquila (2009), Muskoka
    (2010) and Deauville (2011).

    The Nagorno-Karabakh peace process is obviously locked in stalemate
    now. The causes of the stalemate are as follows:

    First, no document for all the conflicting parties to accept as a
    basis for negotiations is available, which is a serious problem. The
    dispute is actually over three different and revised documents: the
    Sochi document, which is utterly unacceptable to Armenia; the Saint
    Petersburg document, which is utterly unacceptable to Azerbaijan and
    the Kazan document, which is unacceptable to Azerbaijan as well. This
    is a sticking point in the negotiations.

    The second cause of the stalemate is the growing number of unsettled
    issues over the years. The Azerbaijan-proposed ten amendments have
    been on the agenda since the Kazan meeting, which are unacceptable
    to the Armenia side.

    The mediators' task is now to persuade the conflicting parties to
    accept one of the aforementioned documents as a basis for negotiations
    (US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must have made such an attempt
    during her visit). Moreover, it is logical to suppose that Mrs Clinton
    proposed that official Baku withdraw eight or nine of its proposals
    and Yerevan, in turn, accept one or two of them.

    Oskanian's deep conviction is that Mrs Clinton did not leave Armenia
    "empty-handed," because Armenia was unable to add anything new to
    the document approved in Kazan.

    Mr Oskanian believes the Armenian side's weak point in the negotiation
    process was that, both untimely and to excess, it agreed to concessions
    without being sure that Azerbaijan would make its concessions. The
    same mistake was made in the Armenian-Turkish negotiations.

    The current situation is actually the reason for the mediators to
    reserve the right to equally accuse the conflicting parties, whereas
    it is Azerbaijan, with its excessive demands and militant rhetoric
    and provocations, that is both damaging the talks and threatening
    the fragile peace, says Oskanian's message.

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