Ara Papian, political scientist and member of the National Democratic Pole Council, organized a rally in front of the French Embassy in Armenia with the agenda “Armenia defined by the proposal of the League of Nations Report and Wilson arbitral award is the basis of lasting peace in the region and the strategic interests of the West.” In an interview with Aravot Daily, referring to Nikol Pashinyan’s statement about how it is necessary for the demarcation and delimitation of the borders to begin, Papian said, “That statement, to put it diplomatically, was lawless and illegal And if I were to give a political assessment, it is betrayal. Because any delimitation and demarcation can be carried out only after the legal basis is clarified. What do we have today? We have only the former Soviet, Stalin-drawn, later-changed administrative lines, which can not be a basis for becoming an Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. The first reason is that they are administrative, not interstate, which even Putin spoke about a couple of weeks ago. The second is that Azerbaijan itself renounced Soviet heritage. Therefore, we must return to the realities of the first republic of Azerbaijan and based on that delimitation and demarcation.
We are not against the peace treaty, delimitation, and demarcation. But first, the basis, which is the borders of the first two republics, must be clarified, and the rest must be done. What the current government is doing is, first of all, ignorance, and secondly, a big delusion because they think that, as Pashinyan says, if we start delimitation, it will stand like a wall and protect us. Does he not see that many countries whose borders have been recognized, in particular, have been attacked by Turkey? Remember Cyprus, Syria, Iraq? So to give everything in the hope that Azerbaijan will show kindness or peace is a fundamental mistake.”
Speaking about the order given by the newly appointed Minister of Defense Arshak Karapetyan about how it is allowed to shoot anyone who will cross the Armenian border, Ara Papian said, “I would take this order seriously if all the previous cases were neutralized, the borders that were ours and are not disputable even in administrative terms, and the intruders were reprimanded and expelled. At the moment, Azerbaijan does not have the task of moving deeper, that is why the order is very formal.”
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Ashot Hakobyan
