As a result of the meeting held in Sochi, a step was taken towards the implementation of the peace agenda, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said during the joint session of the parliamentary standing committees today, commenting on the results of the Sochi trilateral meeting held between the leaders of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan.
“It was a very useful and important meeting. Of course, the meeting has both a public and a closed-format part. Very important issues were voiced. You know that before that meeting there were some discussions in Armenia whether Armenia is moving on with the possible optimal option that exists in the field regarding the normalization of the Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The talk was about to what extent the policy of the officials involved in the negotiations is in the interests of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in terms of content.
I think that one of the most important nuances of the Sochi meeting was the answer to this question. That answer is not that it did not exist before Sochi, it’s just that the discussions around that issue became maximally public, and we can see publicly and compare to what extent our policy is in accordance with that vision and framework,” Pashinyan said.
Because it was discussed, you know, there is a discussion that there is a Russian proposal or a Russian concept and a non-Russian concept. An attempt is being made to create the impression that the steps taken by the Government of Armenia contradict the Russian concept. It is not so. I can now present why it is not.
Public announcements were made. I myself could not voice it publicly before, because in some sense it would be a violation of ethics, but since the authors of the concepts themselves have somewhat revealed what the subtlety is, I can already address the issue from that point of view. Our Russian partners have stated that, in their opinion, the right approach would be to postpone the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh for an indefinite period of time,” said the Prime Minister.
Pashinyan noted that this is justified by the fact that at the moment there is objectively no mutually acceptable status.
According to Pashinyan, the policy of Armenia’s Government fully corresponds to this vision.
He reminded the three components of the issue: security, rights of Armenians and status of Nagorno-Karabakh and mentioned: “You have noticed that we have tried to put aside the word ‘status’ as a problem of today's daily solution precisely because of this vision. We have agreed with our Russian partners that it is not worth going and trying to solve this topic now, because it will lead to an inevitable crisis.”
