I am happy to inform you that we didn’t say that “yogurt is black.” We only said that we should start considering the issue from the point that the yogurt may be black, which should be accepted by the yogurt-maker too because he/she is investing efforts in it.
This is approximately the answer, which the assistant to the US State Secretary Daniel Fried gave when asked by the journalists to comment on the statements of his colleague Mathew Bryza. Reminder: Quite recently Bryza stated that the conflict resolution of the NKR should start from the point of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and that Armenia will ultimately acknowledge that. The response of the American diplomat irritated our side so much that during his visit to the US our Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan told the US vice-president Dick Cheney that Armenia considers these statements very dangerous. In this regard yesterday Daniel Fried said the following, “I am happy to tell you that some media reports of his colleague’s statement were not entirely accurate. We believe that the territorial integrity is an important principle, and we have never said it is the only principle, there are other principles, such as self-determination. Territorial integrity is one of the norms of the international law. One of those is the right of self-determination. We all know what we are speaking about here. It is very difficult to match these two norms. The Minsk Group has worked on this issue for awhile and there is actual progress in this direction. We will work with the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan.” To be quite honest it wasn’t surprising after this statement that Fried considers Vartan Oskanian his old friend and has already managed to meet him before the press conference. We’d like to present to you a part from Mathew Bryza’s interview to the BBC. Let’s mention that the interview has been taken from the reporter of BBC Russia, from our counterpart Mark Grigoryan. The interview is placed in Russian on the website and you can go online to check the accurateness of the interview by visiting http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/international/newsid_7661000/7661150.stm.
Quotation: “Mathew Bryza: We think that we should start from the principle of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and only after that we may include the other principles so that the negotiations are brought to a focal point through compromises. BBC: What do you mean by saying starting from the principle of territorial integrity? Mathew Bryza: It means that we should say that in the legal aspect Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. Armenia should also ultimately agree with that for the sake of successful resolution of the conflict. And we know that Armenia has a different attitude and we should apply all kinds of constructive approaches to help Armenia and Azerbaijan find a common language. It is possible because these approaches match to a certain extent. BBC: Do the presidents of both of the countries know that? Mathew Bryza: Yes they do. On the other hand they defend the stance of their own countries despite the situation in Georgia. I see that each of the presidents is concerned to what level they can trust each other. I see that the level of trust increase step by step. And that is good.”
Perhaps you may agree now that the phrases “important,” “one of the key,” “only principle” and other such phrases don’t make any sense. By the way there is another circumstance, which the journalists didn’t advert to. Mathew Bryza said that both of the presidents of the two countries realize that. It means that not only Mathew Bryza, Dick Cheney or Fried have reasons to justify their words. It’s just Vartan Oskanian is not the RA Foreign Minister any more.