Comments by the EU envoy on the South Caucasus have revealed "lies" by the Armenian foreign minister, an Azerbaijani commentator has said. "The EU considers it premature to conduct any referendum on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh: any voting on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh can only occur after a long process.
"We need to agree on the principles of how this process should be developed to create guarantees for all parties," the EU's special envoy for the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, has said.
"In this way the European politician exposed the lie of Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian," comments political analyst Vugar Seyidov.
"As it was reported before, after a meeting of the Almaty Ministerial Council of OSCE, Heads of the delegations of the three Minsk Group co-chairing states issued a statement in which they noted without indicating the name of the country responsible for the failure that' the proposed elements [refraining from the threat of force or its use, the territorial integrity of states, as well as equal rights and self-determination of peoples] constitute a single entity, and any attempt to select multiple items out of them will make it impossible to achieve a balanced solution'.
"Apparently, by using the hit first principle, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian immediately hurried to 'clarify' whom the authors of the statement had in mind when speaking of attempts to elevate one element above the rest. In his televised speech, the Armenian minister, moving further in the thought contained in the Almaty statement, said: 'Azerbaijan spoke only about territorial integrity, but three principles are implied. If Azerbaijan stands ready to work with these provisions only after they return the territory, it really is speculation on one of the principles.
"It is noteworthy that Kocharyan was not even ashamed to talk about the elements identified in the language of 'primary' and 'secondary', which once again shows his incompetence as a diplomat. Azerbaijan has never considered the issue in such a primitive perspective and did not put one principle above another speaking only on the sequence of their implementation: first, the restoration of territorial integrity and only then realizing the right to self-determination in strict accordance with the Helsinki rules which means not burst but the phased and logical consistency of stages.
"In short, the two sides accused each other of lying and remained unconvinced.
"And then, finally, on Monday the EU special representative for the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, made a statement that exposed the opposite side. After all, if the voting on the status of Nagorno Karabakh is held at a very late stage, that means that it must be preceded by the restoration of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
"And only then can we talk about self-determination of the dual-population of Nagorno-Karabakh, but not vice versa. It turns out that Nalbandian was lying when he referred to the condemnation of the authors of the Almaty declaration of Azerbaijan for its alleged 'non-constructive position'. After all, Yerevan always strove to put the cart before the horse, seeking the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh before the liberation of the territories and thereby raising self-determination above territorial integrity," Seyidov said.
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