On October 24-25 Serzh Sargsyan was in Nagorno-Karabakh Republic for a two-day working visit. On October 25 he met with NKR president Bako Sahakyan, participated in the ceremony of dedication of the new apartment buildings in Stepanakert and the village of Ivanyan for the staff of the NKR Defense Army. Afterwards, the leaders of Armenia and Artsakh watched the military exercise of the NKR Defense Army. After the exercise Sargsyan visited the defense posts. During the interview commenting on the recent proposal of the Russian President of a trilateral meeting and the statement of Turkish President Abdullah Gul that the Armenian President has asked him to mediate in the Karabakh settlement, Serzh Sargsyan said the Karabakh conflict settlement proceeds within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group on the basis of Madrid Principles. “The settlement of the Karabakh conflict is possible if Azerbaijan recognizes the right of people of Karabakh to self-determination, if Nagorno Karabakh is guaranteed a land border with the Republic of Armenia and if the international organizations and the international community guarantee the security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh,” Sargsyan said. “Nagorno-Karabakh is ready to start to negotiate with Azerbaijan without preconditions and discuss any issue relating to the settlement of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani conflict, however, not to detriment of our independence and security,” NKR President Bako Sahakyan told reporters after the military exercise in Karabakh. “The independence and security of Karabakh are not to be subject to bargain and manipulation,” Bako Sahakyan noted, underlining that the territories liberated in the early 1990s are set down in the NKR Constitution and defined as a security belt. It was an apparent reference to opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s October 17 speech in which he accused Sarkisian of being willing to “put up Karabakh for sale” in return for earning the West’s support for his continued rule. Ter-Petrosyan claimed that Sarkisian is even ready to agree to Russia’s replacement by Turkey at the OSCE Minsk Group helm. Newspapers supporting Ter-Petrosyan have also seized on Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s reported claims that Sarkisian himself asked Ankara to mediate in Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations. “I don’t believe the statements made by Serzh Sargsyan, Aliyev, French, Russians or the US co-chairman of the Minsk Group. I only pick some information for myself from those statements. Their statements imply admonishments, which a person who more or less understands diplomacy, may catch the point. The process is what I showed in my speech,” said Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
