Yesterday said ANM member, RA former foreign affairs minister Alexander Arzumanyan. “The Minsk Group format and the other format that was agreed in Budapest have not been applied” he said. Mr. Arzumanyan thinks that the only thing that has happened during these eight years is the fact that the intermediates have discussed the issues and presented their viewpoints to the parties. Basing on the press coverage in the International Media the former foreign affairs minister said that “all the issues are agreed” upon the existing documents developed so far and they need to be applied now. As for the existing version, he thinks that according to it the seven regions in the NKR (Karabakh) should be returned to Azerbaijan, the Azeri people that used to live in that territory should return there and there should be a referendum in the future, which is not clear where and when will be organized. Mr. Arzumanyan says that he agrees with the fact that we have to compromise as well, but says that Armenia is not going to compromise only, but “sacrifice much”. He doesn’t think it is possible to combine the principle of territorial integrity and the principle of self-determination of nations. “There hasn’t been such a thing before, I don’t think it is possible” he said. Concerning RA foreign affairs minister Vardan Oskanyan’s announcement during a press conference recently saying that there hasn’t been significant changes in the foreign policy of Armenia since 1998 (especially connected with Karabakh) but have changed some small details he said that (by the way, when Arzumanyan was the foreign affairs minister, Vardan Oskanyan was his deputy) Oskanyan contradicts himself since he has said the vice versa all the time during these seven years. Mr. Arzumanyan thinks that the positions of Armenia have become weaker, Azerbaijan is trying to move the issue to other instances and institutions, but Armenia does not do anything to prevent that, which is a wrong policy. The former foreign affairs minister also said that the works and the words of the existing government don’t fit with each other and are in contradiction. He thinks that Karabakh should be involved in negotiations in this phase. Mr. Arzumanyan spoke about the Genocide issue as well and said that we shouldn’t include that issue in the agenda of our foreign policy. Meanwhile the former foreign affairs minister thinks that Kocharyan gave a good respond to Turkey’s initiative to found a joint commission of historians connected with the Genocide issue. However, the former foreign affairs minister did not speak about any other good things on the part of the president.
