Last weekend Stepanakert saw a two-day international conference entitled “The 20th Anniversary of NKR’s Independence: Realities and Prospects”, which was attended by lawmakers and political scientists from Karabakh and Armenia, representatives of the expert communities from Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands. The official delegation at the conference from Armenia was led by Deputy Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov.

The main message of the conference was the statement delivered by the chief editor of the Russian news agency REGNUM, well-known Russian political consultant Modest Kolerov: “I do not agree that the more an independent state exists [de facto], the more objective arguments it has for independence [de jure]. It makes no sense to demand that the world recognize the independence of Karabakh until Armenia does so.”

In response, Sharmazanov said that Armenia’s goal is to achieve an international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh. “If a unilateral recognition by Armenia will help in this matter, we will make this step. But everything has its time.”

According to the chairman of the NKR parliamentary commission on foreign policy affairs Vahram Atanesyan, the modern world does not suggest an order by which Nagorno-Karabakh can peacefully exist within Azerbaijan. “The incompatible cannot be combined. The West and the East are incompatible, and now this boundary passes along the border between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan,” said the Karabakhi lawmaker.

The conference took place against the background of a political controversy surrounding a recent interview by NKR President Bako Sahakyan to one of the Greek-language Armenian newspapers. Responding to a question about the limits of concessions from the Armenian side, Sahakyan said that the matter did not concern unilateral concessions, but rather a compromise and that everything would be done without any damage to the interests of the Armenian side.

This caused a flurry of discussions on online social networking sites and in the mainstream media. Armenian political analyst Sergey Shakaryants said that the president of Karabakh should not talk about possible concessions at all. Chairman of the European Integration of Artsakh NGO Hayk Khanumyan published an article in which he called Sahakyan a “driving force behind capitulation”.

Chairman of the NKR Public Council for Foreign Policy and Security Masis Mailyan also believes that neither Armenia nor Nagorno-Karabakh should be discussing the issue of territories. “The Armenian sides should not be tricked by official Baku that often refers to the recognition of the Azerbaijani Republic ostensibly within ‘internationally recognized borders’. “Despite the fact that the Azerbaijani Republic was internationally recognized 20 years ago, it was only recently that the Azerbaijani-Russian border was determined. The process of delimitation and demarcation of the Azeri-Georgian border and the Azerbaijani-Iranian maritime border is still continuing, and the status of the Caspian Sea itself has not been defined. And the process of defining the borders between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia have not started at all in view of the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries.”