“This was a defeat”
"Serzh Sargsyan's decision to not participate in the NATO summit was not a démarche, but was a result of lack of self-confidence and not having anything to say or do," says member of the HAK, leader of the Armenian Liberal Democratic Party Hovhannes Hovhannisyan.
Hovhannisyan says "Serzh Sargsyan gave up to the international community and the great powers". "The international community understood that Armenia is not capable of solving its issues as a sovereign state."
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan doesn't have high expectations from the December 1-2 OSCE summit to be held in Astana and adds that Serzh Sargsyan's decision to participate or not won't change much.
There is an opinion according to which Serzh Sargsyan may use the right to a veto like Levon Ter-Petrosyan did in Lisbon in 1996, but Hovhannisyan doesn't share that view. "You can use the veto if you are backed by the people and the government. Power is more important to the current government than the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
According to Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, the government has led the situation to a point where the right of nations to self-determination is subordinate to the issue of territorial integrity. "This is a defeat, a fiasco. The current government doesn't have any chance of saving Nagorno-Karabakh from a settlement based on the principle of territorial integrity."
Are the people ready to unite for Karabakh as they once did?
"The people sacrificed a part of them for Karabakh and it is inacceptable to have 4 people solve the issue, but there is an attempt to do that. They want to keep the people away from the solutions by killing, sending them to prison, keeping them in extreme social conditions so that people won't fight for issues of national importance. But yes, the people will unite," said Hovhannes Hovhannisyan.
