Tuesday, April 12 2016 20:58

Ex-foreign minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanian has responded to the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan's remarks about the foreign policy during the presidency of the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.  

"The result of the foreign policy conducted by Kocharyan in 1998-2008 was the inclusion of the issue of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in the foreign political agenda of Yerevan (this issue was no part of the Yerevan's foreign political doctrine during Ter-Petrosyan's presidency - editor's note). As a result, 15 more states recognized that crime against humanity. At the same time, Yerevan maintained all possible diplomatic contacts with Turkey," Oskanian says on his Facebook page.  

Oskanian points out that during Kocharyan's presidency it became possible to register immigration and a two-digit economic growth despite the blockade imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan. "As regards the Karabakh peace process, the principle of the Karabakh people's right to self-determination was included in the relevant document (the matter concerns the Madrid principles, which say that the conflict should be resolved with due regard for the principles of peoples' right to self-determination, territorial integrity and non-use of force - editor's note)", he says, adding that over the 10 years of Kocharyan's presidency it was possible to maintain the fragile peace along the entire Armenian-Azerbaijani border and along the line of contact of the Artsakh and Azerbaijani troops and to avoid a big number of victims and casualties. "All this was possible not only due to maintenance of the strategic balance, but also due to the effective diplomatic activities, economic growth and political stability," Oskanian says. 

Touching on Ter-Petrosyan's remarks that Karabakh dropped out of the peace process during Kocharyan's presidency, Oskanian pointed out some details: "Karabakh stopped participating in the negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group since the meeting of April 1997 in Moscow. At that time, all the three parties to the conflict met in such a format for the last time because Azerbaijan - elated by success at the OSCE Summit in Lisbon in 1996 (when the final document fixed the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan with a high level of autonomy of the NKR - editor's note) - started laying down new demands. However, the Armenian delegation I headed and the NKR delegation rejected those demands. The negotiations were over on that day; so were the meetings in that format due to Baku's fault. After that, within a year the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan held at least four meetings with his Azerbaijani counterpart without Stepanakert's participation. It was in Moscow through the mediation of the first president of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin on March 28, through the mediation of the Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel in Istanbul on April 28, as well as on October 10 in Strasbourg, and on October 23 in Chisinau. So, in April 1998, when I became the foreign minister of Armenia, there had been no trilateral format of Karabakh peace process for a year". 

As regards Ter-Petrosyan's statements that Robert Kocharyan gave his consent to initiation of creation of an Armenian-Turkish commission of historians to study the facts of the past, Oskanian says: "Everything is more than transparent in this - Erdogan wrote a letter about creation of such a commission and Kocharyan rejected that proposal. Both letters were published by the Armenian media". 

Concerning Ter-Petrosyan's remark that the Madrid Principles were adopted during Kocharyan's presidency, Oskanian says that the Armenian side adopted that document in order to get more favorable provisions for the Armenian party in the future.  "The document has been the most favorable document on the Karabakh peace process for the Armenian side so far," he stresses. 

Oskanian also emphasizes that the most unacceptable thing in the first president's interview is that the first president stresses the inexpediency of accusations against the authorities amid the escalation in the Karabakh conflict zone. "Earlier I said and I keep saying that amid the Karabakh conflict the authorities should be accountable to us for their flaws and mistakes because we constantly face the threat of war. We should undertake radical political changes as soon as possible, strengthen the democracy and create a strong state," Oskanian says, stressing the need to stop embezzling the property and to spend the public funds on development of the country and modernization of the army, as well as to create a competitive and attractive economy