– Mr. Enokyan, on Fruday the UN General Assembly adopted the draft resolution developed by Azerbaijan entitled as “The situation in the Azeri occupied territories”. The Armenian authorities assure that there are no reasons to worry and the mentioned resolution does not have a legal force. What results may this document bring to?
– I’d like to draw your attention on three main factors. The first factor is that after threatening for a long time at least Azerbaijan succeeded in including the draft resolution in the UN agenda for voting and adopt it. Azerbaijan has been threatening during the past 2-3 years that it would include the issue in the UN agenda, and Armenia and the MG were negotiating to convince not to develop the issue in the UN agenda. Now, in fact, Azerbaijan felt that Armenia has seriously weakened and it is a good time to include that issue in the UN agenda. Now Armenia is in fact in a very vulnerable situation both in terms of the inner political and international issues. The second factor is that the format of the Karabakh conflict negotiations is slowly changing. If till now the issue has been discussed only within the frames of the OSCE MG, now they are attempting to remove the issue to a higher instance, which is the United Nations Organization. It is correct that it has been done only formally till now, only in the General assembly and, as the Armenian diplomats say, is not compulsory for implementation, but these are creating a political and psychological ground for decisions compulsory for implementation. It shows that the issue can be discussed in other places than the Minsk Group format, which is a good place for us, and I think this fact is very bad for Armenia. Second, in fact only seven countries have voted against the draft, 4 countries out of which just had to vote against that draft because these countries include Armenia and the OSCE MG 3 co-chair countries. It shows that our diplomacy is on a very low level. In other words, we haven’t done any works in the UN, no lobby and no discussions with the Ambassadors of other countries, which is natural too: if the foreign affairs minister is mainly occupied in inner political issues, commenting on inner political issues, it is natural that he cannot fulfill his main responsibilities well.
– What can the results of the document adopted in the UN be?
– In diplomacy problems are not solved with one step. The first step toward changing the format of the negotiations has been done and there may be other steps too, as a result of which we will have to give up with some fields of negotiations which are corresponding to our interests.
– What can be done to prevent it?
– In order to prevent that process there should be the vice versa of the above mentioned factors: first, Armenia should have strong, powerful and very legitimate authorities, second, the diplomatic mission should fulfill its main functions, i.e. protect the interests of Armenia in the external world. A serious course of foreign policy should be adopted, which has not been existent in our foreign policy during the recent years.