MUSKOKA, Canada—Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued on June 26 a statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict from the G8 summit in Canada. We present the text of the statement below.
We, the Presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group’s Co-Chair countries, France, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America, reaffirm our commitment to support the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan as they finalize the Basic Principles for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
We welcome as a significant step the recognition by both sides that a lasting settlement must be based upon the Helsinki Principles and the elements that we proposed in connection with our statement at the L’Aquila Summit of the Eight on July 10, 2009, relating to: the return of the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh guaranteeing security and self-governance, a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; final status of Nagorno-Karabakh to be determined in the future by a legally-binding expression of will, the right of all internally-displaced persons and refugees to return, and international security guarantees, including a peacekeeping operation.
Now the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan need to take the next step and complete the work on the Basic Principles to enable the drafting of a peace agreement to begin. We instruct our Ministers and Co-Chairs to work intensively to assist the two sides to overcome their differences in preparation for a joint meeting in Almaty on the margins of OSCE Informal Ministerial.
Careful fellow Armenians, it looks like a bunch of odar leaders are trying to stick it to Armenians worldwide again with their underhanded one sided proposals for supposed “settlement” of this issue in order to line their own pockets with oil exports from the Azeri mutts. However, we all know this issue is already settled, the native Christian people of Arstakh (formerly known as Nagorno-Karabagh) have reclaimed their land which was illegitimately “gifted” to a newly formed Azeri state nearly 100 years ago and are now living democratically under their self-earned banner of freedom.
The right to self-determination of Armenians will NEVER be violated again, if our rights are violated forcefully through geopolitical maneuvering as we are seeing in this statement, then those nations responsible for violations against us will pay dearly for it and the Azeri oil fields will pay dearly for it. The status of Arstakh is not for France, Russia, or the US to decide, it has already been decided 20 years ago by Armenians and it now currently back under the hands of its rightful owners, the Armenians.
Armenians do not like violence but we excel at it when necessary, if our rights are violated again in the 21st century then Armenians in Armenia, Arstakh, AND the Diaspora will react accordingly in holding meddling and responsible parties accountable as was done in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the world can count on that.
I wis all Armenians thought like you
What a ridiculous statement (and contradictory, of course)! The status of Artsakh must be determinated as ‘priority number 1’, because it’s not safe to establish any autonomy that could let AZ military to invade the region. Besides, any referendum of self-determination must be concreted WITHOUT presence of azeris citizens, because the armenians are the ones that suffered azeri represion and persecution (commited by civilians and the AZ military), and because the azeri population commited numerous actions of massacre and forced deportation.
Finally, a peacekeepeng operation will not be necessary if the OSCE Minsk Group resolves the problem in a realistic way (the internal problems in Bosnia-Hercegovina shows that the West doesn’t know how to resolve this kind of historical conflicts); because if their peace formula fails, the problem will flare again, including mass-killings by both sides and a new full-scale war).
The writers of the Joint Statement know full well that the Statement is nothing but diplomatic verbiage and it means nothing. They HAD to say something, and they have said it. As far as Karabakh is concerned (I wish we would all call it Artsakh) didn’t Jews fight the Arabs and capture the current Israel? Didn’t Jews then occupy the territory and didn’t they keep it? Have the signatories of the OSCE Minsk Group’s Co-Chair countries, the Presidents of France, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America ever contested, commented, or objected to the Jewish occupation and appropriation of the conquered land? Have they DARED contradict Jews? What, then, is the big deal about Armenia conquering Artsakh and taking additional land from Azeris? Why should there be ANY question, by ANYONE? We fought, we shed blood, we conquered, and we will keep it. Azeris are very lucky that we didn’t take Baku and the oil fields also. They truly belong to us. Baku was an Armenian town in the 19th Century, full of Armenian intelligentsia. Maybe Azeris should join their Turkic brothers and move back to Altay Mountains, where they came from, and where they belong.