The people of Artsakh have flawlessly exercised their right to self-determination. Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Shavarsh Kocharyan on Friday noted this at the “Cooperation for Justice and Peace” Forum of Artsakh Friends, in Artsakh’s (Nagorno-Karabakh) capital city Stepanakert.

Referring to the right to self-determination, he noted: “This is a right enshrined in the UN Charter as one of the three objectives of the UN. A right to which no principle of international law—including, first of all, territorial integrity—can be countered. A right that prevails over any other international document, be it bilateral or multilateral. If there is a contradiction between the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter and the provision of any other international treaty, the right to self-determination applies.

“It’s the duty of us all to support and be guided by the clearly stated right of Artsakh people to self-determination.”

The next topic of the forum was cooperation.

“If we take a deep look at all the developments, in fact, the obstacle in this matter is the anti-civilizational forces,” the Armenian deputy FM noted, in this regard. “In fact, there is a struggle between civilizations and anti-civilizational forces. Those anti-civilizational forces are a constant obstacle to the development of mankind. It’s no accident that the Armenian people who survived the Genocide are always on the side of civilizational forces. Today, we see the clash of these two forces in the Middle East where traditional civilizations, peoples, nations, tribes are being annihilated in their cradle. All this proves that when we talk about cooperation, cooperation of Artsakh with its friends is cooperation with civilizational forces.

“Today there is a task to be united by the joint efforts of all civilizational forces so that the anti-civilizational forces will not be able to ‘raise their heads.’”