YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan)–A rally in support of Karabakh was held in Yerevan Wednesday.
Speakers said that they would never reconcile with the defeatist policy pursued by the present authorities and would not allow them to sign any document whereby Karabakh is annexed to Azerbaijan.
Participants of the rally issued a statement addressed to the Armenian authorities wherein demanded that Levon Ter-Petrosyan "stop propagandizing defeatist sentimen’s–threaten the people–as well as not allow for provocative calls for the international community to apply sanctions against Armenia."
According to authors of the document–"the leadership of Armenia must defend Karabakh’s freedom which was won at the cost of blood. At the forthcoming meeting in Copenhagen the Armenian delegation must not act as a defeated party–but as a representative of the will and resolution of the Armenian people."
The rally participants also addressed a message to the forthcoming OSCE Foreign Ministers meeting in Copenhagen. The document suggested that regional interests of super powers–particularly–the "oil factor" has become dominating in the matter of the Karabakh conflict settlement.
The historic rights of the Armenian people–their right to self-determination are being ignored in the course of the negotiating process–while the solution to the conflict is conditioned only by what Azerbaijan wants. The signatories also wrote that the issues of border can in no way be applied in relation to the former USSR–as internal borders of that country were established arbitrarily–which was repeatedly condemned by the international community.
It is said in the message that up until 1921 Karabakh was not a part of Azerbaijan. A decision to annex Karabakh to Azerbaijan was taken by the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist Party.
With the other decision the Nakhichevan region which was a part of Armenia and was populated by Armenia’s and it was also annexed to Azerbaijan–while Armenia’s living there were subjected to ethnic cleansing launched by the Azeri authorities. Freedom-loving Armenia’s of Karabakh–reads the statemen’s– inspired by the goal to escape the fate of Nakhichevan–taking advantage of the first opportunity–declared independence from the Azerbaijan SSR. In response to that–overriding the norms of the international law–Azerbaijan declared war against Karabakh.
Proceeding from the aforementioned–the participants of the rally stated that the Armenian people has and will continue to struggle–according to international law–demanding that the discussion of the issue be moved from the sphere of politics into that of the law.