Interviews

Transcript of Live Interview on Urvagits programme on Kentron Television, Armenia with Dennis Sammut, Executive Director of LINKS and Director of the Political Strand of the Consortium Initiative

Thursday 18^th March 2004, 21.30

Q.  Mr Sammut, one of the objectives of your organisation is to contribute to the settlement of the Karabakh issue.   A range of international organisations including the Minsk Group of the OSCE has not achieved any considerable successes.  What are you relying on in your mission?

DS : Well I would like to say first of all that we are not trying to replace the work the Minsk Group is doing.  The Minsk Group is the framework the international community has chosen to try to settle the Karabakh conflict.  The Minsk Group is a framework of states within the framework of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.  What LINKS is doing, and in this we are also working with other non governmental organisations, is to try and support the work of the Minsk Group by opening up the debate with wider society.

Because we don’t represent governments we have a little bit more flexibility in what we say and we can be a little more outspoken in with what we say.  Perhaps the language we use is a little more understandable by the people in general as well.

Q. As I understand one of the objectives of your organisation is to expand dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

DS : Well it is, but let me explain.  There is a process that has been going on for some years now of negotiations between the two presidents, assisted sometimes by other officials.  This process has not succeeded yet.  There have been some occasions were some progress was registered but somehow we go back to square one because society in both countries is not ready to understand or accept what is being proposed.

We think that the process must be opened up in a way that what the presidents are discussing and are doing has to be underpinned by a wider debate, first of all amongst the political community in both countries, and secondly amongst the wider public in both countries.  We feel it is important that the quality of the discussion is improved.  When people don’t know what to say they usually just go for slogans because they are on safe ground. 

Q.  Mr Sammut, do you mean political forces in both Armenia and Azerbaijan when you are speaking about slogans?

DS : Political forces in both Armenia and Azerbaijan use slogans, quite a lot of slogans.  What we have in this situation, most of the time but not always, is what I call megaphone diplomacy.  So we don’t really have diplomacy of negotiations or diplomacy of trying to actually work out solutions to the problem.  We have people shouting slogans from across the frontier from one country to another.  This is not helpful because by the time the message reaches the other side, it gets distorted and it gets misunderstood.  I have seen this happen so many times, on so many issues and I have appealed to my friends here and to my friends in Baku to ‘calm down’ and don’t use this method because it is not useful for you, for your countries or for anybody. 

Q. If I am not mistaken you were recently in Baku, is that so?

DS : Yes that is right.

Q. Mr Sammut, you said that there needs to be positive progress in the dialogue between the two parties.  However the recent murder of the Armenian officer in Hungary and afterwards the stance of officials in Baku and also the statements on behalf of the Ombudsman of Baku, do not inspire much confidence in a process of dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan.  Being in Baku, did you see the forces did you see the parties that are really striving for positive development of the dialogue between the two parties?

DS : I was in Baku before the tragic events in Budapest, but I can quite understand what happened there, as I can quite understand what happened here.  But let me state first of all what impressions I got, and this was before Budapest.  There is increasing debate in Azerbaijan about the Karabakh problem.  The amount of time being spent talking about this issues is much more than it was last year or the year before.  And of course there are different trends.  There is one trend that is saying ‘we must engage in a serious discussion, we must engage in a proper dialogue with the Armenian side to try to resolve this problem’, and there is another trend saying that ‘this is our national humiliation and we have to somehow solve it and we will have to use all methods to solve it’. 

Q. Which trend is the dominant trend in Baku?

DS : Well it is difficult to say because as with everything else and as with every other country, sometimes it is one trend that is more dominant, and sometimes it is the other.  I spent time speaking to both of these groups of people because I think it is very important that we talk to both.  And these two kinds of stereotypes also exist in Armenia by the way, and this is not a unique feature of Azerbaijan.  We talk with both trends, both here and there.  What happened in Budapest was a shock.  It was a shock for you here.  And frankly speaking, regardless of what we hear, it was a shock for people in Baku as well: they were not expecting this to happen.  And is was certainly a shock for people like myself and other people in the international community that have been engaged in this process of dialogue because obviously we understood immediately that an incident like that, a tragedy like that, will have implications.  And there is always a spontaneous reaction when something happens that people are not prepared for.  The spontaneous reaction is the kind of reaction where people have not thought about the consequences and so a lot of things are said that are not sensible.  Afterwards, when the people realise what they have said they realise that they should not have been so emotional and so impulsive in what they were saying.  I think from this tragedy, from the loss of the life of this young Armenian, frankly speaking two lives were lost because this young Azeri is now going to spend most of his time in a jail if he is convicted of this murder.  So from this tragic situation two lives were lost, one is dead and one will have to pay for his crime.  From this tragedy we must draw conclusions, we must draw lessons and we must be more determined.  And when I say ‘we’, and since I am now engaged in this process I feel it is our responsibility also.  So ‘we’, being the Armenians and the Azeris and the international community, must make a bigger effort to move the process forward.

Q.  Mr Sammut, you said that there needs to be progress in the dialogue inside Armenia.  Let me remind you that some twenty days ago, the president of Armenia said during a meeting with students that Armenia will not concede Karabakh to Azerbaijan.  Plus the representatives of culture, literature and arts applied to the president to state that they will not concede Karabakh to Azerbaijan and that it should be made more firmly part of Armenia.  Also in this regard there is no discrepancy of ideas between the opposition and the authorities of Armenia.  So they are supporting the idea that we should not concede Karabakh.  In light of these circumstances can you see the development of the dialogue in Armenia?

DS : Well I would never talk in terms of ‘conceding’, this is not the language I prefer to use.  We have a situation, a situation which is not really acceptable to anybody because people are suffering on all sides in different ways.  From this situation we must move forward to find a solution, a solution that would be a peaceful solution, and a solution that would be achieved not in fifty years time but in a manageable short period of time.  But also a solution that has to have wide support amongst all the interested parties: amongst Armenians and Azerbaijanis, amongst the people of Karabakh who are in Karabakh and who are Armenians and people of Karabakh who had to leave Karabakh because they were Azerbaijani.  There has to be consensus because an imposed solution will not work.  Now, is this easy?  Of course it is not easy.  Is it impossible?  Of course it is not impossible. 

Q. Why?

DS : Well it is possible because it is a problem that has defined parameters and those defined parameters can somehow be altered in a way that would become acceptable to everybody.   It will take time, and it will take concessions on everybody’s side.  Nobody will be able to say ‘I have won all the arguments and I have won all the issues that I am interested in’.  It has to be based on concessions and it has to be based on a vision for the future and not a vision of the past.  The past we have to look at and learn lessons from, but we must not be slaves of the past. 

I want to take up your point regarding Armenian political forces and how they look at Karabakh.  I know that the National Assembly in 2001 adopted a resolution on the Karabakh issue.  Recently they revisited it.  They did not change it, they simply restated it.  I would have preferred that political forces should have engaged in a new discussion because three years have passed, things have changed.  Many changes are taking place in the world and in the region and we need to be sure that what is being said still applies to the situation today.

Q. But not for our political forces, because they restate their position, that is there will be no concessions.

DS : My suggestion is that there should not be a position so fixed that it can never be changed.  This is not how politics is done.  Now, it is important and positive in my view that there is a consensus in Armenia on these issues.  It is better than if people have completely different positions and one is never sure where they are.  But I would like to suggest that we turn this argument a bit up side down.  Instead of going for the most radical position and say ‘OK, let this be the least common denominator’, lets go for the most moderate position and say ‘let this be the least common denominator’.  It is impossible for the political forces to tie the hands of the government and the president on this issue in a way that negotiations become futile.  If there is no space for negotiations, why go and discuss if there is no scope?  And I want to emphasise that I am not the kind of person who says ‘these are people with radical views we don’t respect them, we don’t dialogue with them’.  That is not the approach at all.  People with radical views have radical views because they believe in them very strongly.  We have to understand why they believe in them and we have to persuade them that there are perhaps alternative ways of approaching a subject.

Q.  Mr Sammut you said we have to change the parameters of the Karabakh conflict.  This is a very interesting idea.  What do you understand by this?  Can you open the brackets?

DS : Well I will open them a little bit.  I think the Karabakh issue has different dimensions to it.  It is not a single issue.  It is an issue that has different elements to it.  If the debate was only on a piece of land and perhaps the natural resources that exist on that piece of land then one type of solution can be envisaged.  There are many examples in the world of disputes between countries over pieces of land, territory, continental shelves in the sea, islands and other such situations where people have interests because of either natural resources, or strategic interests or whatever.  If Karabakh was only in this context, it would be an easily solvable problem.

Q.  In which context is it now?

DS : Well, not only now. We have a different situation because the issue of Karabakh is a territorial issue; it is an issue that is connected with the population that lives in Karabakh, and that used to live in Karabakh.  It is connected with the issue of how sustainable Karabakh itself is if one only looks at it in the agreed territory or border that is recognised as being Karabakh.  Is it sustainable without other territories that are attached to it?  I mean it is a different layered subject; it is not simply one issue.  This is what makes it much more complicated. 

Q.  I know that during your stay in Armenia you have dealt with our politicians, media and other representatives of society.  Can you summarize whether you think we are ready for peace?  Does Armenia want peace?

DS : Does Armenia want peace?  I think yes, Armenia wants peace.  There is perhaps a little bit of fear of peace and there is a confusion in the minds of people between peace and defeatism.  Peace is not defeatism.  From a good peace, everybody will win and everybody can celebrate victory, but only if it is a good peace.  I think that society is somehow tied down to a number of positions that were perhaps useful in some period but are becoming less and less useful these days when the world is changing so fast, and when the South Caucasus is changing so fast.  I remain optimistic.