Artsakh’s Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan

STEPANAKERT (Armenpress)—Artsakh’s Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan recently spoke to Armenpress’ Hasmik Harutyunyan in an interview. In his interview, Mirzoyan asserted that the people of the Artsakh Republic are not afraid of war. “People in Artsakh know what war is. They endured the hardship of war and that is the reason the Artsakh Armenians know the price for peace and tend for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.” Mirzoyan said Artsakh and the international community agree, peaceful settlement has no alternative. Part of the interview is below.

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HASMIK HARUTYUNYAN: Mr. Mirzoyan, when it became clear that you received my proposal for the interview, I started studying your interviews in general. It was found out that within the two years you have given quite many interviews and comments. Do you consider publicity an important part of the diplomat’s work or it is a platform to represent the Artsakh issue to broader masses?

KAREN MIRZOYAN: Especially for the diplomacy of an unrecognized country, it is quite important to be active in public diplomacy. That is, to be in dynamic contact with not only media but also the wider masses of the society. As it is no secret that our means differ from those of the traditional diplomacy communication and certainly we should use any opportunity to make the truth about Artsakh and its people accessible to everyone. That is why we use not only the way of the traditional interviews, statements and comments but are also very active in the social networks. We have blogs in Facebook and Twitter and we try to keep our information not only in the borders of the official information, but to present such information, which will be interesting for our readers. We spread information by our pages in the social networks, which maybe has nothing to do with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it is very interesting for the people and contributes to the formation of a positive opinio n about Artsakh in the entire world.

H.H.: You know, you averted my next question, how hard it is for a diplomat to work as a foreign minister in an unrecognized country.

K.M.: Certainly, working as a diplomat in an unrecognized country has its difficulties, though I would prefer focusing on the advantages, as being unrecognized has its advantages as well. For example, we are freer in our work and do not have any traditional diplomatic protocol restrictions. I am free in my relations and I try to maximally use this freedom. We tend to work “aggressively”, not in the sense of pressure, but to be proactive.

H.H.: The humanity today goes the way with “world without borders” ideology. In this case isn’t it an absurd that the independence of some states is recognized and the self-determination of the others is not?

K.M.: There is no justice in the world (laughing). Widely spread is the ideology that we live in an age of globalization and the borders lose their meaning, though at the same time we see that people, even in the age of globalization, retain the loyalty of their ethnic identity, their culture, belief and traditions. This is quite an interesting phenomenon. The struggle of the Artsakh Armenians and the difficulties it faced during the years of the war and the hard way it faces now, independent from the state-building years, are the bright examples of it.