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Georgi Vanyan, interview

THE ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI CONFLICT IS NOW SELF-DECEPTION
BY BOTH PARTIES

News.Az interviews Georgi Vanyan, chairman of the Armenia-based Caucasus Centre of Peace-Making Initiatives

- How would you describe 2010 in terms of the Karabakh conflict settlement?

- It is pointless at present to view the conflict in terms of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. This is the result of 2010, during which a benefit performance for the Minsk process was arranged and all the traditional techniques, used instead of a settlement process, were brought into play: enmity reached its peak on the propaganda front, geopolitical speculation reached its peak on the "Turkish front", the close breath of war reached its final hour at the OSCE summit, all to the accompaniment of chants about the importance of the Minsk Group format. This is fertile ground for caricaturists, for satire and humour, for jokes. But people are in no laughing mood, since the fee for the benefit performance is human lives. The rest, the elite, have no time for joking either, since there is an order to give a standing ovation, to provide comment and support.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is now self-deception by both parties. We ended the conflict stage and went through the stage of painful adaptation to the gladiator life, the gladiator co-existence - the conflict has become self-deception to justify our slavery and humiliation. This is self-deception, vulgar and pathetic, reinforced by the slave owner’s lash who is driving us to the arena for the next protocol bloodshed.

- What is your view of the restoration of the PACE subcommittee on Nagorno-Karabakh?

- No platform of the international community, including PACE, has helped or is helping the search for a solution or to prevent bloodshed. This is the same gladiator life at the level of a verbal squabble of delegations. The only difference is that the delegates are guaranteed immunity and material welfare. This causes the endless enmity, called patriotism in the language of self-deception, which forms the basis of the impenetrable wall, erected between us. On both parts of this wall is terror which restricts and chills the human capacity to differentiate between cause and effect, a capacity quite unnecessary in the gladiator life.


- What about Armenia's domestic policy? There have been recent high-profile resignations of ministers and officials...

- The squabbles of deputies, the settlement of petty conflicts and simultaneous brainwashing with the participation of human rights activists, journalists and all the rest of the sociopolitical elite - the attention of the starving gladiators has to be distracted from the dangerous thoughts of their stomachs.

- The Council for the Public Protection of Georgi Vanyan was created in December last year. How are you working today?

- I usually spend some of my time in the regions of Armenia and in Georgia. Some people, even those who are friendly towards me, believe that the situation has changed so much that all doors in Armenia are already closed to my peacekeeping. I do not think so and I continue working.

- How do you see the future solution to our conflict? Can we settle the political problem by bringing our societies closer?

- There is no need for this. They are already quite integrated in their gladiator life. In order to settle the political problem, it is necessary to formulate it at last. The pseudo-dilemma of territorial integrity and right to self-determination, born in the deep roots of the thought process of Soviet intellectuals, has preserved the status of the political problem. But this is not a political problem, this is ideology, whose main postulate is that Armenians and Azerbaijanis cannot live in peace and all that's keeping them from war to the bitter end is the strong hand of the Kremlin, which the language of self-deception dubs mediation. The death of this ideology will pave the way for a settlement to the conflict.

Kamala Mammadova
15-02-11
News.Az