ARMENIAN IS NOT THREATENED WITH LISBON PAPER ANY MORE

PanARMENIAN.Net - So, the European structure official in fact admitted the document signed by the chairman of that organization cannot be taken as the OSCE leadership’s negation of any other status of Nagorno-Karabakh except the autonomy within Azerbaijan.

Before the OSCE representative statement, Azeri president had a speech accusing the European structures of being not loyal to the decisions made earlier. Heydar Aliyev demanded to “put pressure upon Armenia and to press for immediate withdrawal of Armenian military units from the territory of Azerbaijan”. He called the OSCE Lisbon summit document a basis for the demand. In response, the OSCE Baku office head Peter Burhard had to come out with comment that can be in a sense considered a confirmation of the validity of the arguments of the Armenian side that the chairman’s statement passed in Lisbon is not a binding declaration.

Burhard confirmed that there were no resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh passed at the OSCE 1996 summit. He reminded the draft that the Azeri side appealed to had not been passed, as Armenia had not signed that (as it is known, in the OSCE, resolutions are passed only when a consensus is reached). Instead, the statement of the chairman that was not the summit resulting document was spread. In fact, the Baku office head did not tell anything that had been unknown before. But the fact that the OSCE high ranker makes a statement emphasizing the symbolic meaning of the document spread among the 1996 summit participants is noteworthy. This never happened before. Quite contrary, every time when there was a need to allude to the vulnerability of the Armenian side’s position regarding the Karabakh issue, the Armenian leadership was reminded of the statement of the chairman from different tribunes. To all appearance, revelation of Peter Burhard calling the things with their proper names for the first time states about the new approach of the OSCE leadership realizing the attempts to outline the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh in advance are dangerous and have no future. So the position of Armenia considering the Karabakh’s status has to be determined by the confrontation parties by negotiating and not by international organization that has undertaken the peacemaking mission on the conflict settlement is becoming stronger.