A group of prominent opposition figures and intellectuals announced on
Thursday the launch of a new movement that will campaign against Armenian
territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.



The leaders of the Miatsum (Unification) National Initiative voiced their strong
opposition against the return of any of the seven Azerbaijani districts around
Nagorno-Karabakh that were fully or partly occupied by Armenian forces during
the 1991-1994 war.



Armenian withdrawal from virtually all of those districts is a key element of
the current and past peace proposals made by international mediators. Like its
predecessors, the administration of President Serzh Sarkisian seems ready to
trade them for international recognition of Karabakh’s secession from
Azerbaijan.



In a statement, Miatsum condemned this stance, saying that the “liberated” lands
are vital for Armenia’s and Karabakh’s security. “Any government of Armenia must
unequivocally abandon the unfeasible intention to retain power levers and
illegal economic monopolist privileges at the expense of the integrity of
Armenia’s liberated territory and the country’s defense system,” it said.



Among the signatories to the statement is Zhirayr Sefilian, a prominent veteran
of the Karabakh war and government critic who has long campaigned for a firm
Armenian stand in the conflict. Speaking at a news conference in Yerevan, he and
other organizers of the movement, among them an opposition parliamentarian,
would not say just how they will try to thwart a compromise deal with Azerbaijan




Sefilian’s previous attempt to mount such a campaign landed him prison in late
2006. The Lebanese citizen of Armenian descent was arrested just days after
setting up a new pressure group opposed to any territorial concessions to
Azerbaijan. He was charged with publicly calling for a violent overthrow of the
government.



A Yerevan court subsequently court cleared him of the charge but still jailed
him for 18 months for illegally possessing a pistol which he had received as a
gift from a former commander of the Karabakh Armenian army. Sefilian was
released from prison in June.



Sefilian’s views on Karabakh did not keep him from supporting former President
Levon Ter-Petrosian, a vocal advocate of a compromise settlement with
Azerbaijan, in the February presidential election. His Association of Armenian
Volunteers (HKH) joined a new opposition alliance formed by Ter-Petrosian this
summer.



Sefilian has publicly disagreed with Ter-Petrosian’s recent decision to suspend
anti-government rallies in Yerevan which the ex-president linked with the
renewed international push for Karabakh peace. But it is not clear if the HKH
leader to hold his own rallies in the coming weeks.

By Tigran Avetisian