YEREVAN. - Armenian ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan has published an article on iLur.am website. The article reads, in part:
“It’s beyond doubt that the international community will one day recognize the independence of Karabakh. This contention is based on the fact that the world, on behalf of the Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship and personally Russian, U.S. and French Presidents, has already recognized the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s right to self-determination through referendum. In this connection, I would like to draw attention to the statement of the Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, Mark Toner, made on May 5: ““The United States, along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh’s final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement”. And the “comprehensive settlement” is nothing but the plan drawn out by the Minsk Group Co-Chairmen on the basis of Madrid principles, which enshrines the right of Karabakh people to self-determination through referendum, that is, the right to establish an independent state.
Therefore, through its actions, Armenia must not deviate from the common logic of the conflict settlement (specifically the idea of unilateral recognition of Karabakh), but, on the contrary, get fully involved in the Minsk Group negotiation process and constructively strive for its goals, since, as mentioned earlier, the document discussed in the agenda of that process contains necessary legal grounds for the acquisition of Karabakh’s independence.
To achieve success in the conflict settlement process, the Armenian diplomacy must not only follow the idea of self-determination enshrined in Madrid principles but also use another very important argument for justifying the necessity of Karabakh independence. The latter has to do with the remedial secession doctrine, actively developed in the international law during the last decades. Under that doctrine, if a state systematically violates the civil rights of its ethno-territorial minority citizens on the governmental level and on racial, national, religious and xenohphobia grounds, committing violence and threatening to eliminate them or deport, the international community is obliged to secede the territory occupied by that minority from the state, for the sake of the minority’s survival.
The importance of applying the remedial succession doctrine is so great that the Armenian diplomacy has no right to ignore it.”
