Armenia fixed progress in Karabakh peace process – parliament vice speaker

We succeeded in maintaining peace in Karabakh, and that was a positive achievement for Armenia in 2010, Armenian National Assembly deputy speaker Samvel Nikoyan has said.

"We are more confident and more positively disposed in this matter because the international community realized that a settlement of the conflict is possible only through the maintenance of three principles [peoples' right to self-determination, territorial integrity, and non-use of force]," he told Wednesday a news conference, when summing up Armenia's achievements in the outgoing year.

"We didn’t simply beg peace; we demanded it," Nikoyan said, highly praising the army's efforts in that directions.

Speaking further of the Karabakh peace talks, Nikoyan also referred to the Russian president-mediated meetings between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders. He particularly attached importance to the recently signed humanitarian cooperation agreement on the swap of prisoners of war (POWs) and dead bodies.

As for the Armenia-Turkey relations, Nikoyan hailed the Armenian president's decision to suspend the rapprochement process. He also spoke of the recent disclosures by WikiLeaks.

"The leaked cables proved that the Armenian president has always openly declared his position on the Armenian-Turkish relations," he said, adding that the issue of normalizing bilateral ties through preconditions was always excluded from Armenia's foreign policy agenda.