President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who has already ended his work visit to German, touched upon the Karabagh conflict during his speech given at the Bertelsman fund in Berlin. “We don’t remember one nation who has given up 15 years of independence. Nobody in Karabagh is thinking about doing that. It’s about the changes that the people went through,” he said and added: “Our principle role is that the people of Karabagh have stood up for their right to be autonomous and they did that in accordance with the international norms.” Kocharyan also emphasized the fact that Karabagh acquired independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union and has never formed a part of independent Azerbaijan. “Karabagh has proved its right to exist thanks to the successful construction of the state. Karabagh has conducted democratic parliamentary and presidential elections from time to time,” said Robert Kocharyan, mentioning that although the co-presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group are putting in a lot of effort to make the roles of Armenia and Azerbaijan meet, however “unfortunately, despite the active negotiations, there is not enough ground for optimism”.
