ANCA slams Bryza for retreat from principle in U.S. policy toward Karabakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Chairman Ken Hachikian, in remarks delivered yesterday before more than 900 elected officials and community leaders at the annual Western Region banquet, publicly and forcefully challenged recent statements by senior State Department official Matt Bryza that, as a precondition for peace, Armenia must agree that Nagorno Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, ANCA Communications Director Elizabeth Chouldjian told PanARMENIAN.Net



Speaking before a capacity crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Hachikian sharply condemned the "retreat from principle" in U.S. policy toward the people and republic of Nagorno Karabakh - who have strived, at the brutal cost of a generation of its best sons and daughters - to live up to the fundamentally American ideal that all people deserve to live free of foreign tyranny, under a government of their own choosing." He added that, "just this past week, we saw a senior State Department official, Matt Bryza, moving farther from even the pretense of supporting democracy, by saying that Armenia must accept the false proposition that Nagorno Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. He's absolutely wrong. And we all know it - and so does Baku and Ankara."



In an October 9th interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation Russian language service, Bryza, who serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and also the State Department's representative to the OSCE Minsk Group talks, stated that Armenia must agree that Nagorno Karabakh is legally part of Azerbaijan.



His comments follow a series of statements, over the past several weeks, in which Bryza has demonstrated a pro-Azerbaijani bias by prioritizing the misapplication of the principle of territorial integrity to the Nagorno Karabakh issue over the basic right of all peoples to self-determination.