Manoyan Says Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ Games Must End

For there to be progress in talks, both parties — Armenia and Azerbaijan — have to really begin to talk about the same documents and proposals, said Director of the International Secretariat (Central Hai Dat office) of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) Bureau in Yerevan Giro Manoyan, speaking to journalists in Yerevan today.

Speaking about what’s happened in the last one to one-and-a-half years in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the amended Madrid Principles, Manoyan said, “I think, none among us has seen this updated version. Azerbaijan remains dependent on this updated version; for Armenia and not only for Armenia, but also for all of the OSCE, for the mediators, this updated version is no longer. The fact that the two parties, and I’m not even talking about the mediators, are speaking about different things is not such a reliable phenomenon from the point of view of the effectiveness of the negotiations.”

According to Manoyan, any meeting after which the two parties’ mediators begin to talk about the same things will likely allow negotiations to move forward.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation representative also spoke of the approaches of Armenian diplomats, saying that they should be much tougher in diplomacy and without the participation of Nagorno-Karabakh, the negotiations are meaningless.

“And the [OSCE Minsk Group] Co-Chairs’ games, that the weather was poor and that’s why they didn’t make it to Karabakh, should be stopped,” he said, reiterating that his party is against the idea that there are Armenian territories that have to be handed over to Azerbaijan at some time.