Armenia’s Public TV describes Artsakh conflict “territorial dispute”, seems to start preparing people for peace

The day before Armenia’s Public TV showed a reportage entitled “The Friendship of Past and the Hostility of the Present” which referred to the peaceful life of Armenians and Azerbaijanis before the war and discussed the possibilities of restoration of this friendship.

From the Armenian side the reportage presented Armenia’s bordering Aygepar village in Tavush region, the residents of which remember how they worked together with Azerbaijanis during the soviet years and how they used to visit Azerbaijani Alibeily village, which now is impossible.

The reportage also makes parallels with Georgian-Ossian conflict, noting that unlike the Armenians and Azerbaijanis, these two nations managed to restore the previous relations and live side by side.

It is remarkable that the author of the reportage, while passing to the example of Georgia says, “The picture is completely different in case of the situation with the citizens of Georgia, Ossia and Abkhazia which too have a territorial conflict,” which implies that Artsakh conflict is also a territorial dispute in case when the Armenian side has many times voiced on both diplomatic and state levels that Artsakh conflict is not a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan but an issue of right of people to self-determination, human rights and the issue of security of Artsakh.

At the negotiations the Azerbaijani side too is trying to qualify the Arsakh conflict and present it as a territorial dispute.

More likely, with this reportage the Public TV starts implementation of arrangements achieved between Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in Paris on January 16 - that is preparing peoples to peace.

Another question is with what logic the process of preparing to peace starts with a side which has not started a war and has always been in the role of defender during all these years, the side whose non-friendly attitude toward the neighbor is not a natural, stereotyped condition but a consequence, like for instance a consequence of being threatened to be killed.

May be it would have been more logical to work over eliminating this threat and not its consequences.

In the reportage the residents of bordering Aygepar “without any special preparations” speak about peace and remember their Azerbaijani friends and neighboring Alibeily village without any hatred.

Hopefully, those in the neighboring village will not forget about peace and will not open fire from their posts in the direction of their once friendly residents of Aygepar.