The NATO summit, with its declaration supporting territorial integrity, was another defeat for Armenia, according to AzerTAj reviewer Vugar Seyidov.
He wrote for AzerTAj that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was not a major political figure whose absence or presence mattered at influential international forums, such as the NATO summit in Lisbon.
“It is absolutely ridiculous to talk of a boycott of the NATO summit by the Armenian president. Pardon me, who is boycotting whom? The decision of a political marginal, Sargsyan, not to go to Lisbon is the result of his desire to avoid shame inside the country and reluctance to attend an event that again discredits his diplomacy in the presence of world leaders," Seyidov wrote.
"Armenia suffered its latest diplomatic defeat at the Lisbon summit of the North Atlantic Alliance and we congratulate the ‘experts’ on self-determination, Edward Nalbandian and Shavarsh Kocharyan, on this. The final declaration of the summit expresses the alliance's support for the resolution as soon as possible of conflicts in the South Caucasus and Transdniestria on the basis of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. The declaration does not contain a single mention of the right of nations to self-determination (see paragraphs 21 and 35 of the declaration athttp://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68828.htm).
"Nevertheless, Azerbaijan is by no means gloating over the absence of the reference to self-determination in the declaration. Baku has always supported this right and in December 2009 even co-authored UN General Assembly Resolution A/64/438 'On the implementation of the rights of nations to self-determination', and voted for its adoption. However, unlike the Armenian understanding of this right, which envisages a lack of restraint, the violation of the constitution of a country, unilateral and forced secession, deliberate changes in state borders, ethnic cleansing and military crimes, the understanding of this right by Azerbaijan is based strictly on international law and envisages the constitutional process. Self-determination is possible within the framework of the territorial integrity of a state or with the mutual consent of the centre and province. The events of the late 1980s and early 1990s have nothing to do with legitimate self-determination, since all the actions of the Armenian separatists violated the USSR Constitution of 1977 (Article 78), the USSR law of 3 April 1990, resolutions of the USSR Supreme Soviet, republican laws and, after the USSR's collapse, the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and other international conventions.
"Serzh Sargsyan, Edward Nalbandian, Shavarsh Kocharyan and others talk of the right of nations to self-determination without even studying the issue in detail. They talk about it without understanding its essence.
"The declaration of the NATO summit adopted in Lisbon on 20 November is another cold shower for Yerevan. It is already time for them to make an effort to study the essence of the right of nations to self-determination before speaking about it and to understand that it will not help Armenia to separate Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan without the latter’s consent. Therefore, it is not surprising that the NATO member-states have again confirmed the principle of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of states as a basis for the resolution of conflicts including the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
"After the adoption of the Lisbon declaration, the adoption of the resolution on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, put off for the next session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, is practically a done deal," Seyidov says.
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