Vladimir Karapetyan, the former spokesman of Armenian Foreign Ministry and coordinator of external ties of oppositional Armenian National Congress, considers that the year of 2008 was primarily marked with close negotiation process and unwillingness or inability of Armenian powers to propose new ideas and positions on the Karabakh conflict, clear for the people.
"The inability of powers to refute definite comments, voiced by Turkey and Azerbaijan, weakened positions of Armenia in the result of a loss of the image of the country, the growing threat of sanctions and unusual passiveness of Karabakh are obvious", noted Karapetyan. He said the culmination of this situation was the adoption of the Moscow declaration without participation of Nagorno Karabakh representatives. "It was explained by the fact that the declaration fixes commitment to settle the conflict peacefully, but Azerbaijan did not stop voicing bellicose statements. In fact, we have made a unilateral concession, signing a document without Karabakh's participation for the first time since 1994", noted Karapetyan.
This year, he thinks, Armenia must do everything possible to strengthen its positions in the negotiation process. Grayr Karapetyan, vice speaker of the Armenian parliament and member of Dashnaktsutun, is optimistic about the process of the conflict resolution. He noted that in 2008 they managed to exclude the conflict resolution by armed way while in 2009 efforts on the conflict resolution will continue under the auspices of the Minsk Group.
In turn, secretary of the faction of "Flourishing Armenia" Aram Safaryan, head of the parliamentary delegation of Armenia in OSCE, noted that the rapporteur of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on Nagorno Karabakh Goran Lennmarker will present a regular report on the resolution of the Karabakh conflict on February 19-20 and in this connection on February 9-10 he will visit Armenia, then Baku and perhaps Nagorno Karabakh.
Safaryan also voiced hope that the development of the process of the conflict settlement will continue in 2009 and also did not rule out involvement of new mediators to the process. At the same time, he noted that international organizations to work with OSCE may also be mediators. "New mediators will appear depending on the rates of the resolution process", said Safaryan.
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