THE NEWLY APPOINTED FOREIGN MINISTER OF FRANCE BERNARD KOUCHNER AND HIS APPROACHES TO KARABAKH CONFLICT
The most important sensation of the presidential elections of France on May 6, 2007, was that first time in history the tenure of the President of France held not French, but Hungarian by origin Nikolas Sarkozy. He became the 7th president of post-war France, following Vensan Orioli, Rene Koti, Charle de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Fransua Miteran and Jacques Chirac.
The other two sensations following the elections of France were: firstly, Armenian Patrik Devegian was appointed as a president of the "Union for a Popular Movement" party; secondly, the portfolio of the Foreign Minister of France was given to Bernard Kouchner, even though Kouchner supported Sarkozy's Socialist rival Segolene Royal during the campaign. There was even a period when the socialists were discussing the issue, what if Sarkozy won, who could in that case defeat Sarkozy, Kouchner announced, "I can". And after these events Sarkozy offered Kouchner the important and authoritative tenure of the Foreign Minister of France, and Kouchner accepted the offer, which raised the criticism of his party members.
Today the analysts puzzle over the personnel policy of Sarkozy and the reasons of Kouchner's acceptance of the offer. They give different explanations, which in their turn raise new questions.
One thing is evident; a new period starts in foreign and probably in internal policies of the 5th Republic of France. Sarkozy will say goodbye to some supremacies of Jacques Chirac's foreign policy. He has already announced about the warming of French-American relations, not so favorable approaches to Russian-French relations, a rough position to the membership of Turkey in European Union, that Turkey is a typical Asian country and its place is in Asia, not in Europe, where no one waits for it, etc.
Humanitarian policy will have a peculiar place in the new supremacies of the foreign policy of France, and probably will be the axis of the global policy of it. This is the explanation of appointing Bernard Kouchner in the post of Foreign Minister, as he has no equal in this sphere not only in France, but also in the modern world. Strengthening of the humanitarian aspect in the foreign policy of France was the reason of Bernard Kouchner's acceptance of the offer of Sarkozy.
Bernard Kouchner was born in 1939. He has four children. He is a doctor by profession. It's not the first time that Bernard Kouchner appears in the government of France: Health Minister, then Minister of Health and Humanitarian Action, founder and president of Humanitarian Action Association, co-founder of the Nobel Prize winning aid group "Doctors without borders", etc. He has been in Lebanon, Jordan, Zaire, Darfur, Salvador, Kosovo and other countries of the world to provide humanitarian aid. US former permanent representative of UN Richard Holbruck mentioned about Bernard Kouchner: "He is always against unfairness, either it is from left or right". Kouchner put forward 2 important theses when realizing his humanitarian mission. The first is called the "humanitarian intervention" thesis, it allows intervening in the internal affairs of other country, if there is a violation of human rights, or the physical existence of people and ethnic groups is in question.
Kouchner formulated his second thesis like this: "In order to change the law, sometimes it's necessary to break the law." This thesis was put forward in connection with the correlation of the Law of maintenance of territorial integrity and the right of self-determination of nations. The Law of maintenance of territorial integrity is not an absolute thesis for Kouchner. He approaches this issue from the viewpoint of human rights and physical security of the people and ethnic groups. And if the Law of maintenance of territorial integrity contradicts the issue of human rights, safe existence of people and their self-determination, in that case, the law must be broken according to Kouchner.
Kouchner, who was the author of the abovementioned theses, could not ignore such an ethno-political conflict, as Karabakh conflict is. This conflict focuses the attention of international societies from the first days of its origin. It is discussed in different instances, organizations, institutes, various forums, etc. It is also the general object of various international research projects.
Similar project, titled "Partners of conflicts: building of peace bridges in South Caucasus" was worked out in August-December of 1995, in the Center of International Development and Conflict Management of Maryland University of USA. The members of the project were the representatives from Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, also from USA and Israel. The representative of Armenia was me, the author of this article. The discussions were held in the circles of US Department of State, sometimes also with the specialists of Mayson and Hopkins Universities.
Thanks to this project we had an opportunity to get acquainted with and use very important materials, related to the origin, the reason of Karabakh conflict, and different states' policies and positions to its settlement.
A file focused my attention among these materials. It was titled "Nagorno Karabakh. A working file delivered to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, Committee of Human Rights". It was made by Human rights protectors in Geneva, in 1994, and contained very important statements and viewpoints related to Karabakh conflict. Let's give an example from those files: "Nagorno Karabakh and its neighboring territories were parts of Armenia for 2000 years. Azerbaijan first time pretended on these territories only in 1918, when it became independent.
Among these files, statements and viewpoints was also the important viewpoint of Bernard Kouchner, who was the Minister of Humanitarian Actions of France that time. On March 8, 1992 in Paris during a forum he announced that the 6 km pass of Lachin, which separated Karabakh form Armenia, was "nonsense", and it was "a political and geographical mistake".
This announcement of Kouchner testified that he was very conversant in history and had exact information about the reasons of the origin of Karabakh conflict, division of Armenian territories, the bargain of Russian Bolsheviks and Azerbaijani racists. Otherwise he did not mention that the pass of Lachin was nonsense, and also did not emphasize that it was a political and geographical mistake. Kouchner also mentioned that political and geographical mistake might be corrected. And then he did the next important step and announced, "It's better to agree to change the borders, then to murder the people. It's better to change the borders then to leave the people die." It's worth to mention that Kouchner made this announcement in 1992, when the Soviet and Azerbaijani armed forces were realizing their "Ring" military action, which was the reason of murder of thousands of Armenians, emptying many Armenian villages and making the habitants refugees. He had total information about that inhuman and barbaric action.
In the case of Karabakh conflict, according to Kouchner the Law of maintenance of territorial integrity is not fair and human, and it becomes a law of slaughter of peoples and nations.
As a result of the project in Maryland University, our works were published in 1997, in USA by Maryland University titled "The Ethno-political conflicts in South Caucasus, their sources and ways of settlement". In the same year in Yerevan was published another book in Russian titled "Karabakh conflict. Stages, approaches, ways of settlement". And in 2004 was published "Karabakh problem. The thorny way of freedom and independence" in English. This book contains the abovementioned materials and Bernard Koucher's viewpoint.
15 years passed from the announcement of Kouchner, but he didn't betray his theses of "humanitarian intervention" and breaking the wrong laws related to the borders.
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