Robert Arakelov, Armenian with Integrity,In Azerbaijan, Armenia Is the Aggressor,1999 U.N. Secretary-General Report

Robert Arakelov, Armenian with Integrity

Robert Arakelov Robert Arakelov, the Armenian scholar living in Baku condemns Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan; the author of two books on the Armenian occupation, Robert Karoyevi Arakelov was born in 1937, in Baku. You can learn more byvisiting this link.

In Azerbaijan, Armenia Is the Aggressor

The New York Times, June 9, 1994




To the Editor:

“Azerbaijan, Potentially Rich, Is Impoverished by Warfare” (front page, June 2) unfortunately perpetuates a myth central to the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia regarding Nagorno-Karabakh: “In 1923 Stalin made the region of Nagorno-Karabakh part of Azerbaijan, despite the fact that most of its population was Armenian.” This is not true.

While the majority of Nagorno-Karabakh’s inhabitants have been ethnic Armenians — at least since the end of the last Russian-Persian War in 1828 — the territory has been part of Azerbaijan for hundreds of years. It remained part of Azerbaijan after each Russian-Persian War in the 18th and 19th centurIes. It remained so during the 1918 British occupation, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (at which the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh signed an agreement accepting Azeri jurisdictIon) and when the two nations became Soviet Republics in 1920.

What Stalin did in the 1920’s was refuse Armenian requests to transfer Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan to Armenia, not the same as giving Armenian territory to Azerbaijan because Nagorno-Karabakh was never part of Armenia. A United States Committee for Refugees report notes that Stalin “retained the lines of the map that separated Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia” and “appeared to want to maintain the territorial status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is extremely complicated, epitomizing the contradiction between two principles of international law: self-determination and territorial integrity. However, it is indisputable that Armenia has violated the prohibition of the United Nations Charter against “the use of force -against the territorial integrity... of any state,” for which the Security Council has condemned Armenia numerous times.

WILLIAM H. SCHAAP
Managing Director
Institute for Media Analysis New York, June 2, 1994

1999 U.N. Secretary-General Report

Report of the Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Francis M. Deng, submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights, resolution 1998/50 (E/CN.4/1999/79/Add.1, 25 January 1999, Original: English): "Nagorno-Karabakh is a region to which both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim historical ties stretching back centuries. However, the roots of the present conflict can be traced to the early twentieth century. After the Russian revolution, Azerbaijan and Armenia fought as newly independent States over Nagorno-Karabakh. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 recognized Azerbaijan's claim to the territory. After Azerbaijan and Armenia were incorporated in the Soviet Union, this territorial arrangement for Nagorno-Karabakh was retained, while Armenia was awarded the district of Zangezur which had connected Azerbaijan to its westernmost region of Nakhichevan. Thus, on the resulting map of the region, Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan were enclaves whose inhabitants were separated from their ethnic kin in the titular republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan respectively." " (See also Bill Frelick, Faultlines of Nationality Conflict: Refugees and Displaced Persons from Armenia and Azerbaijan, Washington, U.S. Committee for Refugees, March 1994, pp. 7-9.)" The Azeri writer who contributed the above, in response to an unfair media report, concluded, "Therefore, Karabakh could never have been 'arbitrarily split from Armenia,' as the article claims, as it never belonged to it in the first place."