Was Babayan the “symbol”?
Former commander of the NKR defense army Samvel Babayan truly believes that the NKR has ceased to be a military-political unit and factor in the region and is out of the peace talks only after it was decided to take Samvel Babayan out of the game back in 1999.
Was Babayan left out of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks with the decision by Robert Kocharyan? Does this mean that Babayan is accusing Kocharyan? In response to that Babayan said:
"I repeat: we haven't had any problems with Robert Kocharyan. If we take a look back, we will see that in 1999, Robert Kocharyan was in a worse situation than me. Robert Kocharyan couldn't have done anything back then."
Then who do you mean?
"Do you want me to spell out names? Just take a look at the list of securtiy council officials on December 15, 1999 and you will see the names. There are also current opposition members who had set the issue to remove Samvel Babayan so they could have power. Now they are standing on the side and screaming. There were 15 people, but you know better than I do how Robert Kocharyan was."
Samvel Babayan also touched upon concessions in the NKR conflict. He stated that the people of Karabakh will not agree to any concession and that the conflict can't be resolved without the consent of the people of Karabakh. Samvel Babayan claimed that the liberated territories can't be given because there is more wealth there than the oil in the Caspian basin.
Samvel Babayan doesn't consider the Sargsyan-Aliev meeting pivotal because all talks are nonsensical as long as Aliev hasn't come to grips with the fact that Karabakh cannot be part of Azerbaijan.
Babayan also stated that Artsakh is a part of Armenia and even if the Armenian people concede Karabakh and the liberated lands, there will be no right to go on living.
As for Turkish-Armenian relations, Samvel Babayan believes that Turkey will put an end to the negotiations and the proclamation signed in Switzerland a day before the genocide commemoration was not by chance. According to the former Karabakh army commander, that was to the benefit of Turkey because it did not want to hear the word genocide pronounced.
