InternationalEdward Nalbandian: “This is not a statement becoming of a co-chair”
Senior U.S. official acknowledges importance of self-determination, nonuse of force
Published: Thursday December 04, 2008
OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Bernard Fassier of France, Yuri Merzlyakov of Russia, and Matthew Bryza of the United States, with Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian of Armenia (second from left), in Helsinki, Dec. 3, 2008. Tatul Hakobyan
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Helsinki, Finland - Armenia's Foreign Minister, Edward Nalbandian, speaking to journalists in Helsinki on December 4, responded angrily to a statement made earlier in the day by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group mediating the final resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Mr. Bryza had said, speaking in Russian: "We say that the Karabakh peace agreement must begin with territorial integrity, because that principle operates in the whole world. But there can be no agreement if it does not include points about a certain level of self-determination for Nagorno-Karabakh and the principle of the nonuse of force."
Mr. Nalbandian told journalists: "I want to believe that Matthew Bryza has not made such an announcement because that is not a statement becoming of a co-chair, but of a person who does not want the negotiations to proceed in a correct and normal way. I hope that he has not made such a statement, but it is necessary to ask him again. He perhaps wished to say something else, and this is what came out. Or, I'd like to believe, again, that he has not made such a statement."
Mr. Bryza spoke to Armenian journalists again after this comment by Mr. Nalbandian. He denied saying that the agreement must start with the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Rather, he said, all three of the core principles of Helsinki final acts, Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, Nagorno-Karabakh's right to self-determination, and the nonuse of force are important.
Mr. Bryza told the Armenian Reporter, in English: "Each President has their own sense of what the main principle needs to be to reach settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh. For President Ilham Aliyev, he supports territorial integrity as the first principle. For President Serge Sargsian, he supports self-determination as the first principle. For me as a mediator, my opinion doesn't matter. I am not a decision maker. What I can say is what we have been working on, we seek, is an agreement acceptable to both sides. And to be acceptable, the agreement has to include all three of the core principles of the Helsinki final acts, which are nonuse of force, self-determination, and territorial integrity."
The United States had in the past avoided language that could be deemed to prejudge the outcome of the negotiations. Since the war in Georgia in early August, however, U.S. officials have used language that tends to gives primacy to territorial integrity.
In Baku on September 3, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States is "committed to achieving a negotiated solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict - a solution that starts with the principle of territorial integrity, and takes into account other international principles." In a meeting soon afterward with Mr. Cheney, Armenia's prime minister said the approach was "extremely dangerous."
"If territorial integrity is prioritized, the peace process - all of the work the mediators have done - becomes meaningless," Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian told the Armenian Reporter's Emil Sanamyan on October 14. "And this also provokes [Azerbaijan] toward war."
