ANCA: "U.S. officials acting like surrogates for the Azerbaijani Embassy"

"Bush Administration officials continued to press forward their new, more aggressive position against freedom for Nagorno Karabakh, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) said in a statement received by PanARMENIAN.Net.

"Over the past several weeks, since the time of Vice President Dick Cheney’s early September visit to Azerbaijan, the Administration has rolled back any mention of self-determination, eliminating any reference to this core international legal and democratic principle from its diplomatic vocabulary. Speaking in Baku, the Vice President – echoing Azerbaijan's negotiating stand – said that a Nagorno Karabakh settlement "must proceed" from the principle of territorial integrity and only "take into account other principles."

As recently as earlier today, in Armenia, Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried repeated the newly formulated U.S. stand that a Nagorno Karabakh settlement must start from the principle of "territorial integrity," although he did concede that there were "other established norms," an apparent reference to democracy and self-determination, which he carefully avoided naming.

It is also said in a statement that in a January 19, 2008 statement, Presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged that, if elected, he would work for "a lasting and durable settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict that is agreeable to all parties, and based upon America’s founding commitment to the principles of democracy and self determination."

"In their last months in office, these officials are acting a lot less like responsible stewards of U.S. policy and more like surrogates for the Azerbaijani Embassy, it’s K Street lobbyists, and energy industry allies", says the statement

"It’s no coincidence that Azerbaijan’s President, hearing this outright cheerleading from Washington, has pledged an all out political, economic, and military offensive against Armenia.

We stand – as Americans - for the proposition that democracy can serve as the only durable foundation for lasting peace; for the fundamentally American ideal that all people deserve the right to live free of foreign tyranny –to live under a government of their own choosing," the statement says.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/