Some basic facts - and its only going to get worse

Below is the translation of the Dec 3 statement from the ANC - just some hard basic facts. There's a lot I want to write about this piece, but, the piece itself says it better...
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ANC December 3, 2009 Announcement

With the joint statement of December 1 by five Ministers (including the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia), and subsequently, with the statement that constitutes an official resolution by the OSCE Ministerial Council of 56 countries that convened in Athens, the Republic of Armenia has signed an official document which has taken upon itself to speedily reach an agreement on the fundamental principles for the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, an agreement that will be based on three principles established by the Helsinki Final Act:

· Non - utilization of force or the threat of force
· Territorial integrity
· Equal rights and self determination of Peoples

In this way, for the first time Armenia has officially agreed that the Karabakh conflict may be settled within the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. In this context, the inclusion of the right to self determination of peoples does not in any way diminish or compensate for Armenia’s retreat. The simultaneous application of the principles of territorial integrity and self determination means that regardless how high a level of self-governance is chosen for Nagorno Karabakh, the status will not matter, as it will still be realized within the territorial boundaries of Azerbaijan, that is, Karabakh will be a part of Azerbaijan. In this way, Armenia has agreed to a settlement of the Karabakh issue which has closed the prospect of having the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh ever be internationally recognized as an independent country.

Such a development has consistently been averted since 1992, when Armenia, having become a member of the OSCE, consistently used the right to veto and the power of a potential veto to block any expressions or clauses in international documents that would allow for the settlement of the Karabakh issue based on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. In 1996, during the OSCE Lisbon Summit, when there was an attempt to limit the right of self determination of Nagorno Karabakh by the proposition that such a right be realized within the territorial boundaries of Azerbaijan, the President of the Republic of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian vetoed that draft resolution in spite of unprecedented international pressure and the positions of all of the other countries of the OSCE. In a similar situation, today’s authorities also had the same opportunity, and did not utilize that right. The only explanation for this policy of concessions is the vulnerability of this illegitimate government, which is attempting to compensate for that illegitimacy with deals with the international community sealed by the price of unnecessary concessions on the Karabakh issue. The foundation of this sort of politics was laid in 1999 by Robert Kocharian who, by signing the Istanbul Charter, gave Armenia’s agreement to the general idea of the use of the principle of territorial integrity as the basis of conflict settlement. And in Athens, for the first time, that was applied specifically to the Karabakh conflict.

Over the past two years, the ANC has given warnings on multiple occasions of such dangerous developments; it has also argued that the only way of avoiding such developments is the reestablishment of constitutional order and the removal of the current regime. It is clear that every additional day that this government stays in power pulls Armenia into international obligations that are not derived from the interests of the people, thus making its prompt removal that much more urgent. The ANC will continue its struggle to create a legitimate government in the country, which will be capable of representing the interests of the people in the international arena and of avoiding even further losses.

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The original is available at the Armenian National Congress website: anc.am