“I don’t think we are in a deadlock. I think there is the chance to resolve the NKR conflict in a peaceful way. I am sure of that otherwise wouldn’t run the presidential elections,” several days ago said the president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan during his interview with a German professor Tillman Alert. “I will leave politics with pleasure when the NKR conflict is resolved. It will be the happiest day of my life, when Azerbaijan recognizes the self-identification right of Karabakh; Karabakh becomes an independent state. I will immediately resign when NKR becomes independent or joins Armenia,” stated Sargsyan. As a response to Alert’s question whether the issue of NKR doesn’t impede that Armenia acts more openly in the international arena and external relations with other Sargsyan said, “Indeed, nobody can insist that under these circumstances we are freer in terms of making decisions but on the other hand we are resolving a historical issue. On the other hand Karabakh is Armenian land and there our brothers and sisters live. What shall we do? Shall be leave them alone and cast them to the caprice of destiny and watch how the whole territory of Karabakh is being cleaned from Armenians?” As a response to the question German professor on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the new situation Serzh Sargsyan said that for him the Soviet Union was collapsed in 1988. “We and I especially was deeply convinced that something unfair was happening and me and my friends decided to become a part of the movement and not the collapsed part of the Union. We did this on the first days of the movement in 1988. We should have chosen between the fatherland and the party and of course we went for the fatherland,” mentioned Sargsyan. When speaking of the process of the recognition of the genocide Sargsyan said, “There is no doubt for any Armenian that there was genocide and the fact that Armenia is trying its best so that Turkey recognizes the commitment of a genocide, isn’t just a goal. The recognition mostly has a preventative character. It is mostly connected with justness. Recently I have mentioned that I am willing to incessantly repeat that for our society the most important thing is the value of justness.” The German professor also asked whether all the previous presidents of Armenia comprehended the essence of their political activity in the light of Karabakh and if so the question should be whether the real Armenians aren’t the ones from Karabakh. The president answered, “The real Armenians are the ones, who live in Los Angeles, Quebec, Gyumri, Yerevan, Stepanakert. They are all Armenians. The only thing is that the Armenians from Karabakh were for a long time involved in the fight for liberation and they are still strongly involved in that process. If this fight was in Gyumri, Noyemberyan or some other place we might have the same picture and we’d say that the real Armenians are the ones from Gyumri or Noyemberyan.”
