On July 1, 1997, Parliament Vice-Speaker Baroness Cox, along with supporters, spoke to 
the British House of Lords regarding the conflict between Azerbaijan and Karabagh.   In 
her appeal to consider the plight of Karabagh, Baroness Cox said, "The credibility of the 
OSCE is at stake: it cannot be in its long-term interests to try to inflict a political solution 
which flouts the principles of justice and demonstrates the truth of Churchill’s comment 
that the tragedy of the Armenian people is that blood is lighter than oil."  Undoubtedly, 
Azeri President Heydar Aliyev’s four trillion dollar oil chip is weighing heavily on 
Britain’s administrators as well as our own. 


Meanwhile, here in our United States, Heydar Aliyev has been playing the role of a 
prominent statesman.  A man who should otherwise be serving time in prison was 
afforded VIP status by our President.   He was a guest at the Blair House;  he spoke at a 
Georgetown University forum entitled, "The United States and Azerbaijan" with former 
State Department official Richard Armitage and former National Security Advisor 
Zbigniew Brzezinski moderating.  Both of these men are currently highly paid consultants 
for American oil interests in the Caspian Sea region.  President Aliyev also had lunch 
with President Clinton where he, no doubt, flaunted his four trillion dollar oil chip while 
expressing his ‘wish list’ for our United States in making future decisions concerning 
Armenia and Karabagh.  


Ross Vartian is the executive director of the Washington, D.C. based Armenian 
Assembly of America.  According to Mr. Vartian, President Aliyev’s wish list might read 
as follows:


- An end to the ban approved by Congress in 1992 on U.S. aid to Azerbaijan without first 
requiring Azerbaijan to drop its economic blockade of Armenia and the ethnic Armenians 
living in Nagorno Karabagh. 

- A continuation of the ban on humaniarian aid to Nagorno Karabagh.

- U.S. support for the principle of territorial integrity for Azerbaijan at the expense of the 
principles of self-determination for the people on Nagorno-Karabagh.


At present all of our major Armenian organizations, both here and abroad, are asking the 
Diaspora to join hands to confront this gigantic threat to Nagorno Karabagh’s 
independence which also encompasses the future security of the Armenian Republic.  It 
generally takes a major crisis to bring our Armenian people together.  And this being the 
case, let no one look at this present crisis with Azerbaijan as a minor political squabble.  
It’s gigantic in proportion and the final outcome may very well determine the future 
survival of both Armenia and Karabagh.


Contact your national representatives as you have been asked to do and let us hope and 
pray that we are successful.  And above all, let this crisis demonstrate to our people, our 
religious leaders, and our politicals, if it isn’t too late, that we must not always wait for a 
major crisis in order to join hands.


Our true strength and our only chance of survival as a people in the Diaspora and as a 
nation in the homeland is in unity.


Joseph Vosbikian