Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan gave an interview to Euronews TV, Armenian Government’s Press office reports.
Euronews – What about the mediation of the EU? Many international actors have attempted to mediate this crisis, Russia, the USA, and now the European Union has been playing a bigger role. What do they bring to the negotiating table?
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I would like to start by emphasizing that the advantages of mediation have long been known to everyone, but all mediations come with certain shortcomings, they all have shortcomings, and each mediation has its peculiar shortcoming. If you allow me, I will speak about the shortcoming.
Look, for the Brussels platform, the problem we see and it has been a continuous problem is that around the table we reach a certain understanding, and we do this in the presence of the President of the European Council. And if one of the sides does not address, fulfill that agreement, this is not followed even by specific assessments. Here is an example: in my presence and the presence of the European Council President, back at the end of last year the President of Azerbaijan promised and undertook that within 15 days, they would let free 10 prisoners. They have not fulfilled that commitment so far. On the other hand, I assume that the effective mediation is when the failure to fulfill an agreement would be followed by at least a show of political attitude towards the one that fails to fulfill that commitment. In the Brussels platform we are not seeing this, I keep raising this issue.
Let me reveal a secret. We have even prepared a document that we called an “audit”, where we list the understandings that were reached at the Brussels platform but were subsequently not fulfilled. That’s quite a thick package, which is alarming.
Euronews – You are saying that Brussels is not following up when it comes to the shortcomings of either side?
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – If without diplomacy, then yes.
