Armenian nationalist politician closes doors on dialogue

Sunday, May 2, 2010

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

YEREVAN - Hürriyet Daily News

Claims of sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh are threatening to draw Armenia and Azerbaijan into a new conflict at the slightest provocation.

Although international peacemakers are actively working to settle the disputes, political experts are worried that the slightest wrong step could fuel antagonism between the two parties.

Manvel Sargsian, who organized the Karabakh movement against Azerbaijan in Yerevan in 1987, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that Russia was fueling the problem by “supporting the Azeris” in the policy to “remove the Armenians from the region.”

Sargsian was Armenia’s Nagorno-Karabakh representative after the armed clashes came to an end in 1994.

The Armenian politician also said it is not possible for Armenia to make “the smallest concession” in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, comments that show how mired the region’s problems are in nationalism.

Blaming Turkey due to preconditions

Noting that Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 because of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Sargsian said Turkey is “imposing preconditions” on the reopening of the border. “Karabakh cannot be a precondition in the [Turkey-Armenia] border issue,” he said. “Not the smallest piece of land can be sacrificed.”

The nationalist politician also had a different view on the Khojaly massacres, in which hundreds of ethnic Azerbaijani civilians were killed Feb. 25 and Feb. 26, 1992, during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The Armenian politician claimed Aziz Muttalibov, the former president of Azerbaijan, had himself said the massacre was committed by the “Azerbaijani opposition.”

“The bodies of innocent Azeris murdered by the soldiers in the city of Ağdam city 15 kilometers away were carried away to Khojaly by those soldiers themselves,” Sargsian said.

Azerbaijan, along with the Memorial Human Rights Center, Human Rights Watch and other international observers, say the massacre was committed by ethnic Armenian armed forces.

These international sources also say the killings were carried out with the help of Russian soldiers in the region. The official death toll provided by Azerbaijan stood at 613 civilians, of whom 106 were women and 83 were children.

“Everyone in Turkey says Russians aided the Armenians, but this is a lie,” said Sargsian. “On the contrary, they helped the Azerbaijanis. We supplied our weapons from the Tashnaks.”

Sargsian insisted on Russia’s role in the present stalemate in Nagorno-Karabakh, claiming that the Soviet Union had strived hard to remove Armenians from the region, thus fuelling the conflict.

Saying that during the conflict, Russian forces handed over Armenian civilians to Azerbaijan, Sargsian claimed the number of such civilians had reached 700 by the end of the clashes.