Monday, May 30, 2005

Today I got a phone call from a friend telling me that the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights was having a roundtable discussion about the Artsakh conflict at hotel Armenia and I should attend.

At 5pm the roundtable, which was actually rectangle, was occupied by a number of professors, socialist, human-rights activists, representatives of various political groups, an advisor to the President of NKR, a representative of the NKR Ministry of Defense and a representative of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The discussion started with the question of how will the conflict be resolved and to what price we will are willing to pay.

It very quickly was agreed that the Artsakh “conflict” was not a conflict for us, but more a conflict for Azerbaijan. The people of Artsakh had resolved for the most part any conflict it had with Azerbaijan, when after 70 years of trying, had finally liberated Artsakh.

One other thing that was an issue for many people was the negotiation of the possible return of territories that Azerbaijan is claming recently we have agreed to give control to them.

It was agreed that the Armenian people have to demand to our government and put as much pressure as we can that we are not relinquishing even an inch of land and there is no need to discuss such possibilities with Azerbaijan.

For the most part the discussion went well and though there were a few people who were pitching their parties platform (at least this is how I interpreted it), I really thought that we have come to a turning point where a well represented part of the population made it clear that irregardless of what the government does or negotiates, the present day territorial integrity of Artsakh will not be compromised.

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