The head of the Christian Democratic Union of Armenia, Khosrov Harutyunyan, has expressed his satisfaction with the performance of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the Pashinyan-Aliyev debate during the Munich Security Conference, but not without hesitation. Speaking about the debate at the Henaran press club, Khosrov Harutyunyan said that this was the first meeting of its kind between the leaders of both countries. Therefore, he believes that the organizers and the participants needed to have come up with goals. The first goal should have been what message the leaders wanted to get across to the international community and to their own people. The second goal should have been security and they needed to discuss regional security issues. And the third goal needed to have been the emphasis on the new authorities’ perspective on the Artsakh issue.
According to Khosrov Harutyunyan, it was not made clear during the debate that the Artsakh issue is entirely based on the fact that Azerbaijan does not want to accept the existence of the independent state and it wants to carry out a war against this state. “The conflict is not between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. The issue here is not territorial security and that issue should not be regarded in this context. Munich was the perfect place to clarify why the right to self-determination should be of utmost importance.”
After all of this, in response to Aliyev’s suggestion about resolving the conflict “phase by phase,” the Prime Minister needed to have clearly stated that Artsakh cannot be a part of Azerbaijan under any circumstances or conditions. “But this clarification was not made,” Harutyunyan said, adding that the audience gathered there was unaware of the issue and it needed to be informed in the presence of both sides. “Aliyev took advantage of this and presented his ‘phase by phase’ concept. But the Prime Minister didn’t.”
In response to a question about why that happened, Khosrov Harutyunyan had two answers. Most likely, Pashinyan is forced to not mention the standpoints of the former authorities due to his own unreasonable aversion to them and his desire to make the conflict more personal. Harutyunyan said that this is not good, but it can be improved. Or, if there is a way to push the resolution of the conflict forward that is different from the perspectives and approaches of the former authorities, then Armenians need to demand that Pashinyan express more transparently what that is. Khosrov Harutyunyan finds it even more worrisome if mini-revolutions are seen as the way to resolve the conflict. According to him, the Artsakh conflict resolution needs to come as a package; all sides need to negotiate on all points, which also needs to include the authorities of Artsakh, and then they need to work on implementing those negotiations with clear guarantees. Otherwise, it will be detrimental to the security of Armenia and Artsakh.
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In any case, Khosrov Harutyunyan had his expectations that the Prime Minister will be self-critical and analyze his performance as a result of the Munich debate. But the Prime Minister’s theses that he posted on Facebook showed that he did not learn his lesson. According to Harutyunyan, these theses carry a real danger that analysts have already discussed.
Nelly Grigoryan
