YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — A recent UN court ruling that upheld the legality of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia set an important precedent for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict, President Serge Sargisian said on Monday.
“For us, the Kosovo precedent is important in the sense that the UN International Court of Justice [ICJ] clearly answered one question,” he said. “The question was: does a unilateral declaration of independence contradict international law or not? The answer was no, it doesn’t.”
Speaking after talks with Slovenia’s visiting President Danilo Turk, Sargisian said although ethnic disputes around the world have their own specificities, solutions to them must be based on “the same principles.”
He said the only major difference between the conflicts over Kosovo and Karabagh is that the Karabagh Armenians won de facto independence “without NATO’s support.”
“Nagorno Karabagh is now patiently awaiting the moment when the international community will recognize its unilaterallydeclared independence,” Sargisian said at a joint news conference with Turk.
Turk, whose country has recognized Kosovo as an independent state, was more cautious in speaking about the ICJ ruling.
