In a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington on October 10, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian raised concerns on behalf of Armenia over the recently modified rhetoric of U.S. officials on Nagorno-Karabakh, the prime minister's office reported.
It is "extremely dangerous" to emphasize the principle of territorial integrity at the expense of self-determination when it comes to Karabakh, Mr. Sarkisian told Mr. Cheney in what amounted to the first publicly reported criticism of the revised U.S. policy language by Armenia.
The prime minister was referring, in particular, to remarks delivered in Baku by Mr. Cheney that a Karabakh settlement "must proceed" from the principle of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and only then "take into account other principles." The remarks were apparently drafted by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates in the Karabakh negotiations.
"If territorial integrity is prioritized, the peace process - all of the work the mediators have done - becomes meaningless," Prime Minister Sarkisian told the Armenian Reporter on October 14. "And this also provokes toward war." According to Mr. Sarkisian, Mr. Cheney in response reiterated U.S. support for the peace process.
Armenian Reporter
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