Former Deputy Minister of Defense and former National Assembly Foreign Relations Committee leader Artak Zakaryan was interviewed by Aravot.
– Ever since his first day in power, Nikol Pashinyan has spoken about the return of Artsakh to the negotiations table. What observations have you made? What steps have Armenian authorities taken to implement this? What haven’t they done? And when do you think we will see Artsakh’s leaders at the negotiations table?
– The fact that Artsakh needs to return to the negotiations table and be recognized as a complete side of the process is undoubtable. The fact that the people of Artsakh need to be in charge of their future and need to be given the opportunity to carry out their right to self-determination is also undoubtable. I hope that the current authorities will not be distracted from these fundamentals.
– How do you view the internal political riots taking place in Azerbaijan? Should we be scared, careful, or calm? How will the riots end, according to you?
– Let the riots end however the people want them to. I am not interested in whether Azerbaijan is an authoritarian nation or a democratic one. We fought a war against both an authoritarian Azerbaijan and a democratic one from 1990-1994. Both wished to kill, rob, and destroy Armenians in Artsakh and in the rest of the region. That is their internal problem, but there is one circumstance that should not be excluded. If mass protests continue in Azerbaijan and get larger, then they are not democratic and tolerant like we are to peacefully pass on leadership to the leader of the protests. That also poses a danger for the military; they may cause problems just to distract people from what’s going on.
Nelly Grigoryan
