Armenian demands on the Karabakh conflict settlement are weakening year by year, according to an Armenian opposition politician.
Levon Zurabyan, coordinator of the opposition Armenian National Congress, told an ARMENIA Today correspondent on Monday that Yerevan was making more concessions to Baku in the talks process.
He was commenting after the Azerbaijani foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, on Friday revealed some of the details of the Karabakh talks.
Mammadyarov did not say anything new, according to Zurabyan. The only news was that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan had agreed to surrender Lachin and Kelbajar districts within five years of the signing of a peace agreement, but this information had yet to be confirmed by other sources. Everything else was something of a reflection of the 2007 Madrid negotiating process, Zurabyan toldARMENIA Today.
Pro-government forces in Armenia have been talking about the success of Armenian diplomacy at the recent meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents, mediated by the Russian president, in St Petersburg. Zurabyan commented: “I don't know anything about diplomatic success. In fact, we can see a drift in Yerevan’s concessions to the Azerbaijani side.”
As for the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, Zurabyan said that much would depend on the text of the peace agreement.
Azerbaijan is offering the status of the highest autonomy to the disputed region, but the Madrid principles, which the OSCE wants to be the basis for talks, propose a referendum on the region's status.
Zurabyan said no-one was ever going to hold a referendum or poll among the population of Karabakh. “The final document is likely to contain vague formulations aimed only at rescuing Sargsyan’s image,” he said.
Asked whether resistance from Karabakh was possible, the opposition politician said there was no precedent of political or public resistance of Karabakh to Armenia. “The authorities of Karabakh have been an appendix to the Armenian authorities which is why to a certain extent no-one perceives the Nagorno-Karabakh republic as a separate entity,” he said.
News.Az
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