Armenia is ignored because it is considered a rogue state

I want to ask readers the following question: Would you invite a person with no culture to your birthday party along with respectable representatives of society if he shows no respect for private property and steals from its neighbours? I am sure you wouldn’t.

Armenia, with its current leadership, is not invited to any major world forums. It was not invited to the 40th anniversary of the annual meeting of members of the World Economic Forum to the Munich Security Conference.

Azerbaijan attended both forums and was an important speaker at the oil and gas summit. Azerbaijan’s statements were covered by many global media, triggering a wide response and great interest by leading world powers.

Meanwhile, nobody invites Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to international forums. No one writes to him, no one is waiting for him.

In other words, Armenia is in a smooth transition to a rogue state. In such countries the leadership mistreats its own people, wastes national resources for gains of rulers, shows disrespect for international laws, threatens its neighbors, violates international agreements, assists terrorism and rejects basic human values.

Let’s talk about the abovementioned points.

Firstly, Armenian authorities mistreat their own people and squander national resources for the gains of rulers. Recently, the co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Armenia John Prescott and Georges Colombier sent a letter to the Armenian Parliament Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan requesting a comprehensible reforms timetable before the meeting of the Monitoring Committee in Paris, March 17, 2010. The message posted on the PACE official Web site underscored the need to implement reforms that will enable the investigation of the tragic events of March 1, 2008, which resulted in the killing of Armenian citizens demanding fair elections.

Everything is much clearer when it comes to the waste of national wealth for personal gains. Armenians themselves are also talking about it. The Armenian National “Miabanutyun” Club Head Smbat Karakhanian said that Armenian authorities consist of oligarchs, criminals and foreign proteges.

“The government owns roughly 85 percent of all assets and companies in the country, including illegal traffic, and controls almost 90 percent of the financial flows. In this sense, it is easy to imagine the fate and true purpose of interstate loans,” Karakhanyan said.

The disrespect for international laws, threatening neighbors, grossly violating international agreements is already becoming obvious to the world community. Recently, Euronews aired a report which said that besides Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia has occupied seven regions of Azerbaijan and refuses to withdraw its troops, violating four U.N. resolutions. The report also spoke about the genocide of Azerbaijanis in Khojaly and showed pictures of crime against humanity.

The threat to its neighbors and the country’s refusal to leave the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, whose territorial integrity is recognized worldwide, may give rise to separatism and terrorism in the region. Plus, we have heard about Armenia’s new territorial claims to Azerbaijan, part of Turkey’s territory and that of Georgia (Javakheti).

Well, we all witnessed how cynically Armenia can violate the treaties it has signed and the Constitutional Court’s decision to change the Armenian-Turkish protocols proves that.

When it comes to assisting terrorism on a global scale and the rejection of basic human values, it is appropriate to recall that the term “Armenian terrorism” first officially used in America’s State Department monthly bulletin in August, 1982. Also, it is worth recalling the words of former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for European Affairs Stephen Oxman who said that the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, occupied by Armenia, is currently uncontrolled and international cooperation is needed to prevent the spread of terrorism.

As for Armenia's rejection of basic human values, the most telling evidence of this is the genocide of Azerbaijanis in Khojaly, and the statement of former Armenian President Robert Kocharian that Azerbaijanis and Armenians are genetically incompatible. Such openly fascist rhetoric is another explanation why Armenia is now a rogue state.

A. Hasanov
Day.Az writer