Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has given an interview to Reuters. Below is the article about the interview.
“Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday that only a change in Turkey’s stance on Nagorno-Karabakh could prompt Azerbaijan to halt military action.
But, in his first interview since a ceasefire deal was agreed Saturday in Moscow on the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, he gave no indication to Reuters that he saw any sign of Ankara shifting its position.
Speaking at his official residence, a huge Soviet-era building in the centre of the Armenian capital Yerevan, Pashinyan accused Turkey of sabotaging the ceasefire and of trying to muscle its way into the wider South Caucasus region to further what he called its expansionist ambitions.
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“I am convinced that for as long as Turkey’s position remains unchanged, Azerbaijan will not stop fighting,” Pashinyan said.
Nikol Pashinyan said Turkey had stated publicly, before the ceasefire talks, that it believed Azerbaijan should keep fighting, and that Turkey’s foreign minister had phoned the Azeri foreign minister after the deal. The Prime Minister of Armenia suggested the purpose of the Turkish post-ceasefire call “was really an instruction not to dare under any circumstance to stop fighting.”
“Turkey has come to the South Caucasus to continue the policy it is carrying out in the Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus, or in Libya, or in Syria, or in Iraq. It is an expansionist policy. Turkey’s expansionist plans to the north, to the east, and to the southeast are well known, the point is that Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last impediment on that way. And now Turkey is not tackling the Karabakh issue at all. Turkey is trying to continue its genocidal policy, since Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on its path to advancing that expansionist policy to the north, east and south-east,” he said.
The Armenian Premier reiterated that Turkey is carrying on the policies of the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century, something he called a continuation of the Armenian genocide.
“The whole of the South Caucasus will become Syria and that fire would spread to the north and to the south rapidly, practically within a few months, and to the east – in the long run” Nikol Pashinyan said.”
INFORMATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT OF THE OFFICE OF THE PRIME-MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA