International Court of Justice (ICJ) verdict on Kosovo’s independence will give new impetus to its international recognition, Stepan Safaryan, Head of the Heritage parliamentary group, told NEWS.am, commenting on the ICJ verdict on Kosovo, July 22. “The court could not return a different verdict, as no one can challenge the reasons for the region’s independence – all the states exercised this right,” Safaryan said.

The ICJ ruling that, by gaining independence, Kosovo did not violate any international law suggests the following: any people’s independent cannot be dependent on any other people’s will. “It means that international law does not consider it inconsistent when independence is declared or recognized unilaterally,” Safaryan said.

“Nagorno-Karabakh’s unrecognized independence is hostage to Azerbaijan’s political will. Our task is to put an end to the principle: Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence will not be recognized as long as Azerbaijan refuses to recognize it,” Safaryan said. He is sure Armenia will yet long feel sorry about not having recognized Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence in 2007, when the Heritage  Party and Raffi Hovhannisyan proposed doing it.

However much the international community claims the Kosovo case to be a unique case, the Armenian side should property refer to both the Kosovo process and the ICJ verdict in presenting the Nagorno-Karabakh problem to international agencies.

“There is not a single international agency our faction has not raised the Kosovo issue at. We are going to draw parallels between Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh in future as well,” Safaryan said.