The Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan gave an interview to Reuters the article on which is presented below:
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday that only a change in Turkey's position on Nagorno-Karabakh could push Azerbaijan to cease hostilities.
However, in his first interview since the ceasefire agreement reached in Moscow on Saturday over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he did not give the slightest hint that Ankara's position had changed.
Speaking at his official residence, a huge Soviet-era building in the centre of the Armenian capital Yerevan, Pashinyan accused Turkey of sabotaging the ceasefire and of trying to muscle its way into the wider South Caucasus region to further what he called its expansionist ambitions.
“I’m convinced that as long as Turkey’s position remains unchanged, Azerbaijan will not stop fighting”, Pashinyan said.
He said Turkey had stated publicly, before the ceasefire talks, that it believed Azerbaijan should keep fighting, and that Turkey’s foreign minister had phoned the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister after the deal.
“Turkey has come to the South Caucasus to continue the policy it is carrying out in the Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus, or in Libya, or in Syria, or in Iraq. It is an expansionist policy. Turkey's expansionist plans to the north, to the east, to the southeast are well known. The issue is that the Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last obstacle in the way of pursuing that expansionist policy. And now Turkey does not solve the Karabakh issue at all. Turkey is trying to continue its policy of the Armenian Genocide, because in the South Caucasus, Armenia, the Armenians, are the last obstacle on its expansion to the north, to the east, to the south-east", Pashinyan said.
He reiterated that Turkey is carrying on the policies of the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century, something he called a continuation of “the Armenian genocide”. “The whole of the South Caucasus will become Syria and fire would spread to the north and to the south very rapidly, practically in several months and to the east for a longer period of time", he said.
