PM Nikol Pashinyan says reactions to his interview “at least puzzling”

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said some of the responses to his December 24 interview are “at least puzzling” for several reasons. The Prime Minister took to Facebook to list the reasons:

1. In that interview, I spoke about the content of the negotiations formed before I became Prime Minister in 2018, therefore, I could not have any influence on their formation.
   
2. In response to a question, I denied Serzh Sargsyan’s assertion at the RPA Congress that the content of the negotiations left by them guaranteed that Nagorno Karabakh would be Armenian. I denied it because the right of Azerbaijanis living in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to participate in the decision on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as a resident of Nagorno-Karabakh was enshrined in that content of the negotiations. Therefore, if they are residents of Nagorno-Karabakh according to the content of the negotiations, then they had to live in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Armenian side never objected to this content before the 2018 revolution. And if we take into account that according to the content of the negotiations formed before I became Prime Minister, the referendum on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh could take place 100 years later, it is predictable what changes in the demographic picture of Artsakh would be under the mentioned conditions.
   
3. As for the status of Nagorno-Karabakh before the potential referendum on status, I said in an interview that in 2016 the mediators had presented three negotiation packages (one before the April war, two after), where, unlike the 2011 Kazan document, the wording “Nagorno Karabakh gets an intermediate status” was missing. The third of these three packages, presented in August 2016, contains a provision stating that the decision on the legal and practical mechanisms for the organization of life in Nagorno-Karabakh will be made by the UN Security Council in consultation with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. This is what I considered to be a catastrophe in the negotiation process, because it is obvious that the UN Security Council would make all the decisions following the logic of its own resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
   
4. Taking into account these and several other important negotiation issues, I have insisted from the Parliament tribune that under the negotiation content and realities existing before I became Prime Minister in 2018, Artsakh had lost both theoretical and practical opportunities not to be part of Azerbaijan.
   
5. Becoming Prime Minister, I did not accept this, but fought against it. And this is one of the reasons why the war started.
   
6. People saying that I should not negotiate on behalf of Nagorno-Karabakh have been criticizing me since 2018 for saying that I do not have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of Nagorno-Karabakh.
   
7. I understand that many respectable people are now protesting against the negotiation content that is the cause and consequence of the 2016 war. At that time they either did not know or did not have the right to complain. I also complain against that content and I did everything possible to neutralize that content. I am sorry I can not hide the truth.

The comments come in the wake of Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan’s statement, in which he said the full recognition of the right of the Armenians of Artsakh to self-determination is not subject to reservation and concession. Therefore, he said, only the authorities of the Artsakh Republic are authorized to speak on behalf of the people of Artsakh.