“The year 2004 was a year full of events. It had its ups and downs,
there were good and bad times, but something tells me that we will
finish up the year pretty well,” said Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan
yesterday at the National Media Group. He added that the Foreign
Ministry will give a full summary of the year in detail during the half
of January. Vartan Oskanyan said that there had been more positive “ups
and downs” than negative.
While discussing the negotiations for the Karabagh peace settlement,
Vartan Oskanyan mentioned the meeting that he had with Foreign Minister
of Azerbaijan Elmar Mamedyarov. According to Oskanyan, even though the
issue regarding the liberated lands raised by Azerbaijan at the UN’s
Chief Assembly had created some problems, today those obstacles have
been overcome and the meetings between the two foreign ministers will
continue. What changes are being made to the former principles set
forth by Paris and the negotiations of Praga? Vartan Oskanyan did not
say anything about the differences between the two (if there are any at
all). “I would describe the events happening in Praga as the following:
the principles remain the same with a couple of changes. This will give
the Azeri side the opportunity to stay in the game.” Vartan Oskanyan
did not go deep into what kind of changes there have been in the
principles of negotiations. However, President of Azerbaijan Ilham
Aliyev had made an announcement concerning Praga’s principles, claiming
that the negotiations are being led taking into consideration
Azerbaijan’s regional totalitarian principle. It seems as though this
announcement corresponds to Vartan Oskanyan’s announcement when he says
that changing the principles will give Azerbaijan the opportunity to
keep negotiating. Vartan Oskanyan did not comment on Ilham Aliyev’s
announcement. “I do not wish to make comments on neither Ilham Aliyev’s
announcements nor the announcements made by the Azeri in general. I
want to believe what I see or hear going on in the Praga process,” said
Vartan Oskanyan. Based on what Vartan Oskanyan sees and hears about the
Praga process, he has the right to say that the Armenian side can get
more now than it could in the past. “At the present, I think we have
the chance to get more out of this than we had in 1997. It is just laid
out on the table,” says Vartan Oskanyan assuring himself. “But if you
ask me whether or not we will get what we want, I will not be able to
give an answer.” As for what was being offered in 1997, Oskanyan does
not deny the fact that it could happen again, but this time more
favorable. “After five years, we might have this discussion again and
claim that maybe we should have accepted the offer made in 1997.” The
former authorities claim that Vartan Oskanyan has played a major role
in the Karabagh peace settlement phase variant when he was Vice Foreign
Minister. Vartan Oskanyan himself does not deny that. “When the
President of Armenia had put the phase variant in front of me, of
course, I led negotiations, went deeper into the issue and defended it.
As for playing a major role in that issue, I can say that I don’t
consider myself that important.”
At the present, Vartan Oskanyan’s main issue is to guarantee the right
of the people of Karabagh to be autonomous. “We must secure the right
of the people of Karabagh to be autonomous through the contract which
will help us solve this issue. Let me go deeper and say the following:
we should be not so direct in making this a reality.” As to what this
means, only Vartan Oskanyan knows. Speaking of complimentary speeches,
it turns out that this type of foreign politics has turned Armenia not
only into a “Caucasus tiger”, but also the most independent state in
the Caucasus region. “I will always point out the fact that the country
that leads negotiations independently is Armenia,” said Vartan Oskanyan
and added that the foreign politics of other countries in the region
does not give them the chance to maneuver as much as complimentary acts
do for Armenia. Of course, after a couple of minutes Oskanyan took back
what he had said about Armenia being the most independent and said:
“There are some limits set on our foreign politics, including our
geographical location, how small our country is, our limited resources,
and our dependency on neighboring and distant countries.”
As in all his conferences in the past months, yesterday was no
exception for Vartan Oskanyan when he ruled out the events of Georgia
and Ukraine happening in Armenia. According to him, no matter how
common it is to copy the Western world, those events will not play a
major role in Armenia. “Nowadays we are the ones who are going with
Western values, the authorities, including myself. It will continue
like this. We will remain within the framework of complimentary acts.”
This, perhaps, was Vartan Oskanyan’s most impressive announcement.