The Armenia-Azerbaijan border
After Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan blamed the international community for “forcing” Yerevan to lower the bar on its expectations for a final status of Karabakh and thus angering the authorities and people of Artsakh, his ruling party made an attempt to walk back some of the brazen concessions by saying that Artsakh had “misunderstood” Yerevan’s signals.
In an unprecedented rebuke of Pashinyan’s remarks, the authorities in Stepanakert emphasized that Artsakh cannot fall under Azerbaijani control and its hard-won independence and the people’s right to self-determination should not be threatened. The Artsakh parliament on Thursday issued a statement calling on Pashinyan to retract his statement, which they said posed an existential threat to Artsakh.
“Our colleagues probably did not understand well the essence of the prime minister’s speech. I just can’t find any other explanation for that declaration,” said Eduard Aghajanyan, a senior member of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party who heads the Armenian parliament’s committee on foreign relations.
“Any solution that would lead to the exodus of Armenians from Artsakh cannot be acceptable for the Republic of Armenia,” Aghajanyan claimed, adding that the people of Artsakh would be the crucial beneficiaries of Pashinyan’s proposed approach to engage in “peace talks” with Azerbaijan.
“The Artsakh conflict was never a territorial dispute for Armenia,” said Aghajanyan. “It has been an issue of exercising the right of the Armenians of Artsakh to live safely in their homeland. Therefore, for us, basically the status has always been a measure to exercise these rights. Armenia’s position on this issue has always been unchanged.”
Pashinyan’s ally also discussed the issue of “lowering the bar” on expectations on Artsakh’s status.
“First of all, this is about the bar as a result of which the international community ensure consolidation around Armenia resulting in, at least, a pro-Armenian solution becoming more likely,” said Aghajanyan.
“We have 30 years of negotiating experience during which we’ve had a certain bar, and also because of this during these 30 years Armenia was essentially in a diplomatic isolation, the consequences of which I believe we are all seeing, and we also saw during and after the 44-day war. I think it is time to draw conclusions from our mistakes and move forward realistic reasons,” claimed the Civil Contract lawmaker.
Aghajanyan claimed that Pashinyan did not make any comments about Artsakh being part of Azerbaijan, saying that Yerevan would not agree to any solution that is not acceptable to the people of Artsakh.