According to him the meetings of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were absolutely inefficient. The only purpose of the negotiations on Nagorno Karabagh (NK) was the maintenance of the “status quo” – prolong the process of negotiations and then speak with ultimatums. “It’s not a new thing what they say today that if the negotiations fail we will recognize the independence of NK. A few years ago the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that if the negotiations do not bring tangible results within two years they will recognize the independence. And we know that the Minister is not allowed even to “commit an error” without the permission of the President. Thus, this is a policy,” says Ararktsyan. According to him it was clearly planned to cease the negotiation process. He thinks that all this has been planned long ago to block the process of talks. He also said that none of the foreign powers would pressure on the negotiating parties because they don’t need it.
Since 1997, no power has ever pressured on the negotiating sides. The international community will only pressure if the conflict “directly relates to them”. “This issue doesn’t concern them and only the belligerent parties should be interested in its resolution,” he said and added that, “the basic issues that the international community is interested in are already resolved. Those are the Baku-Jeyhan oil pipeline, which will soon operate. All the economic projects are being implemented and Armenia is isolated from this process. Therefore, why would they pressure?” He also said, “The international community offers certain methods for good life and say you either accept those methods or keep living the unfavorable life.” According to Ararktsyan the time works on Azerbaijan’s side and the latter keeps patiently accepting different rules and documents proposed by the international community. As a result, a great material is being gathered, such as aggression, occupation, etc. “We had our privileges received by military actions. The military achievements should have been immediately applied in politics for a better outcome. This wasn’t done and the success achieved by military actions goes away very fast and sometimes may even harm us,” he said. Talking about the fact that the co-chairmen don’t think that the negotiation process is blocked Ararktsyan asks, “What else would they do? Admit that they have failed and go home?” He thinks that the co-chairmen are professional diplomats. Therefore they won’t ever admit that the negotiations are blocked. The fact that the negotiations are blocked is a fact because otherwise the RA President wouldn’t announce that they are going to recognize NK. Ararktsyan thinks that the winning side shouldn’t make such announcements. This can be said only by Azerbaijan, which would say that the negotiations are blocked and the conflict can be resolved only by military methods. “The Armenian government benefits from this kind of situation. A corrupted illegitimate government as Armenia cannot ever express a good political will to solve these issues. Today the government is ruled by oligarchs, who work in close collaboration with criminal circles, the result of which is the “default” of Armenia’s political life,” he says. Ararktsyan thinks that Azerbaijan may say one thing to their people. If the conflict is not resolved peacefully they will resolve it by force. “What’s unclear is why Armenia would start a war. What do you want? If you want to talk about conquering Baku shall we speak about war?” He thinks that the problem is not the format of the negotiation process but the willingness of parties. “The format has one important requirement. No matter what kind of negotiation NK should be part of it.” He thinks that the negotiations may take years but the important thing is to have a certain outcome. When speaking about conducting a referendum about the retrieval of refugees in Karabagh in 10-15 years the former NA Speaker said that the retrieval of refugees is practically impossible and the referendum is unreasonable. “The issue of the referendum is the greatest bluff. What does referendum mean? The referendum must have legal grounds. Even the Ghost Referendum of November 27 had legal grounds. They were saying if you fill certain number of ballots we’ll have a new constitution. Will Azerbaijan adopt a constitutional law, which would define the result of the referendum? Where will the referendum take place in Armenia or Azerbaijan? This is the greatest bluff,” said Ararktsyan. Yesterday he also spoke about the government change in 1998, in which he thinks there was no pressure from outside. At that time they thought that if the Karabagh conflict isn’t resolved, Armenia will have neither political nor economic development. That’s why they thought they should have looked for alternative solutions. “This was not presented orally. There are documents. I wouldn’t say that we had the full support of the society at that time. At that moment we had just one option to let them implement their own policy. We would be very happy if it was possible to maintain the previous documents and keep NK in the diameter of 8 thousand square meters. It is clear that we wouldn’t be able to do that. But we cannot do anything right now either. Now we don’t have what we had in 1997,” said Ararktsyan.