October 4, 2007 - 13:22 AMT
Karabakh issue should not be discussed at UN
"The Nagorno Karabakh conflict is included on the agenda of this General Assembly session under the topic of protracted conflicts. But any resolution that places all conflicts in one pot is necessarily flawed. Each of these conflicts is different. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict doesn't belong there. This issue should not be discussed at the UN, because it is being negotiated in the OSCE," Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said in his address to the UN General Assembly.

"First, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is not frozen. We continue to negotiate and we are inching towards resolution. Second, there is a well-developed negotiating document on the table, based not on wishful thinking, but on the core issue and the consequential issues. Together, they add up to a balanced solution. Third, at the core of the process lies the issue of the right of the people of Nagorno Karabakh to determine their own future. Indeed, the people of Nagorno Karabakh don't want anything that is not theirs - they want a right to live in peace and security and to determine their own future, they want to exercise the right that every people here has exercised at some point in their history," he said.

"We follow very closely developments on Kosovo. We hear the international community loud and clear, that Kosovo cannot be a precedent for other conflicts. While we have no intention to use Kosovo as a precedent for our conflict, since that would contradict our own position that all conflicts are different. But at the same time, we won't understand or accept the reverse logic - that if Kosovo is given independence, no other people can achieve self-determination. No one should tell us that there is a quota on liberty and security," the Minister said.