ArmInfo. The office of the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan responded to the statement of the first RA President Levon Ter-Petrosyan that it is Kocharyan who is guilty of driving Artsakh out of their format for negotiations on the Karabakh conflict settlement.
The statement reads in part: "Today the ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan has once again made an untrue statement in which he accused the second president in the displacement of Artsakh from the format of the negotiations on the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Head of the Office of the second President Victor Soghomonyan repeatedly. I addressed this issue and on the facts prove that Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his political team were guilty of that Artsakh was left out of the negotiation process. Historical facts suggest that the representatives of the NKR have ceased to participate in the negotiations for at least a year before the election of President Robert Kocharian and the meeting of presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan and the negotiations were conducted periodically since 1990 -. parallel to the Minsk process, Levon Ter- Petrosyan held talks with Ayaz Mutalibov, Abulfaz Elchibey and Heydar Aliyev Moreover, at the same time held intensive meetings between representatives of the two presidents - Zhirayr Liparityanom and Vafa Guluzade (in 1995-96 there were 11 such stretch). " As evidence of this, the office cites the statement of Zhirayr Liparitian at the London conference to the "Prospect of Transcaucasia", published in the newspaper "Hayk" dated January 25, 1997 ("Hayk" was the official organ of the "Armenian National Movement" party headed by Ter-Petrosyan). "Armenia will no longer negotiate with Azerbaijan on the Karabakh problem without the participation of Karabakh." Liparitian also said that Armenia adopted this decision because, as the OSCE Lisbon summit showed, Azerbaijan is trying to use bilateral meetings to gradually force Karabakh out of the negotiation process. According to him, at one time, Armenia met and accepted Azerbaijan's proposal to hold bilateral negotiations in order to simplify the process. "Ter-Petrosyan's cynicism literally goes off scale: he again accuses the second president of being guilty himself," the statement said.