Armenia is not rejecting the peace agenda, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan announced during the discussion of the implementation of the Government's plan for 2022 in the National Assembly.
According to him, the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan will become realistic if the two countries clearly, without ambiguity, recognize each other's territorial integrity.
The Prime Minister reaffirmed that Armenia fully recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and expects that Azerbaijan will do the same by recognizing the territory of the Soviet Armenian as Republic of Armenia.
“But it is here that we reach the biggest and most difficult problem, Nagorno Karabakh. And there is a nuance, which has been highly urgent during the past sixteen years, but we haven’t addressed it. The problem is that usually we address and have addressed the future of Nagorno Karabakh, but it is important to address the issue of Nagorno Karabakh’s situation at any moment during the existence of the conflict,” Pashinyan said. He said he attempted to do this several times during the past five years, but regrettably the issue transforms into a dispute between the opposition and the government, which is also normal.
“During the entire course of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination were placed side by side. This actually recorded realities which we cannot admit, but regardless of admitting or not, they exist. In this context, the right to self-determination means that you, as a beneficiary of the right to self-determination, are raising the issue of revising your, so to say, nominal A status. Theoretically this could mean to revise the A status and make it a B status, or revise it and not change it, or revise it and make it A+1 or A-1 status,” Pashinyan said. But without noting the A status, with this logic there can’t be any talk about any future status, meaning the self-determination.
“If you raise the issue of self-determination it means you are part of something. If you are a part of something, you’ve either already self-determined or don’t have the need to self-determination. Now, with our own hands, during the time known to you, we have created this negotiations, political, geopolitical reality, cemented it, but after that we’ve said we want a B status for Nagorno Karabakh, but we’ve never publicly accepted the A status. We’ve lied to ourselves with this, the people of Armenia, the people of Nagorno Karabakh,” Pashinyan said, adding that there won’t be peace until they face this fact. Pashinyan said he considers his political commitment to be peace. In this context, Pashinyan attached high importance to the development of an international mechanism for dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert to ensure the implementation of the rights and security agenda of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.
