Once, the “tour” of an Azeri journalist on the Internet ended with a scandal. That journalist had revealed the annual report about NGOs and representations prepared by the U.S. Justice Department, where he also found out about the representation of Nagorno Karabakh.
Everyone knows what happened after that, and whoever doesn’t know can figure it out-we had the usual hysteria. The worst is that the U.S. Justice Department prepares that report two times a year and this is not the first time that it mentions Karabakh. “Nothing has changed after that scandal. Of course, the work is hard because there is no dual agreement and that’s why the representation doesn’t work efficiently. Our representation is of political significance,” says Vartan Barseghyan, who has been the constant representative of Nagorno Karabakh since 1999.
The American representation office of Artsakh is located in Washington. It’s in the heart of the city-19th street, in the same building of the Armenian Assembly of America and the same division. In fact, the office consists of three small rooms with a representative and two workers and the representation is able to get involved in active propaganda with the minimum amount of resources. The representation prepares an annual newsletter about Artsakh for the Congress, the White House and the Armenian community, organizes receptions at the Congress, as well as the visits of state officials from Artaskh to Washington. Recently, Vartan Barseghyan had presented Karabakh’s opinion on the conflict negotiations process in the American “Diplomatic traffic” periodical.
Of course, the representation follows up on the conflict negotiation process. The representatives think that OSCE American co-chairman Matthew Braiza can bring a new “momentum” to the Armenian-Azeri negotiations, which have been going on for more than a decade now. “Braiza is from Condoleeza Rice’s team. The two have worked together in the Security council. When Rice was appointed as Secretary of State, she took Braiza along. They’re from the same team and Braiza’s career depends on the success of the conflict negotiations,” says V. Barseghyan.
It’s obvious that Turkey and Azerbaijan “hate” the Artaskh representation. There was an agreement to organize an event with the “Marshall” fund, but the fund refused to do anything after the intervention of Azerbaijan, however the event did took place a littlel later on,” said V. Barseghyan and added that it’s difficult to resist Turkish and Azeri aggression, which is rather influential in Washington. There is no contact between Turk and Azeri diplomats. They meet during seminars and try not to notice each other. “During one conference, the Azeri delegate, who was a representative of the Azeri parliament, refused to sit next to me around the table. He said to me ‘you’re not a representative, you’re probably just a student’. So, they don’t like the presence of Karabakh there, they don’t like to see us working and do everything they can to create obstacles for us or even close the office. But it’s useless.” Besides propaganda and political programs, the Nagorno Karabakh representation of America is also planning economic projects, in other words, negotiate with businessmen to make investments in Artsakh.