On August 31, when the Armenia faction nominated Artur Ghazinyan for the post of Deputy Chair of the NA Committee on Defense and Security Affairs, Civil Contract Deputy Kristine Poghosyan quoted from one of Ghazinyan’s 2016 interviews. Ghazinyan had said, “Until 1998 the Karabakh conflict was going on in the logic of nations’ self-determination because there was a nation, there was a territory where that nation was striving for power and self-determination. That is why it was fighting, that is why there was a war, that is why it was negotiating in all negotiations. In other words, it was exercising its right as provided by international law. Then in 1998, it was decided that Karabakh should not participate in the negotiations anymore and that Armenia would represent Karabakh’s interests despite the fact that I have not seen any official permission or document authorizing the President of Armenia to speak on Nagorno-Karabakh’s behalf. If it exists, it would be great if that could be published.
When Karabakh was pushed out of the negotiation process, the issue shifted from the principle of self-determination of nations to a territorial dispute between two states. If the issue is posed as a territorial dispute, then territorial integrity prevails. The international community does not want to set a dangerous precedent, to resolve the territorial dispute in favor of a state claiming territories. Consequently, the attitude of the international community towards the Karabakh issue changed because before that the principle of self-determination of nations was being implemented, and everyone understood that the people of Karabakh are the ones fighting here, that the people are striving for self-determination and independence. Later the situation changed, and in my opinion, it was just a betrayal of the people and the state of Karabakh. I do not know for what reasons it was done, what they got in return, but today we have a situation where the issue is discussed by the international community as a territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is catastrophic for Armenia in terms of law.”
Citing this quote, Kristine Poghosyan asked about how he was essentially accusing Robert Kocharyan of direct betrayal, and if the leader of the Armenia alliance shares his opinion. Ghazinyan answered that maybe he was wrong and said 1998 instead of 1997, giving a deviation of one year. “Jirayr Liparityan, who was then the foreign policy adviser to the first president Levon Ter-Petrossian, published information in one of his articles that the decision to leave Artsakh out of the negotiations took place earlier. In the future, all these qualifications refer to the political force that made that decision.”
He claimed that according to the facts, Artsakh was left out of the talks during the leadership of the political team of the first president. In the aforementioned interview, Ghazinyan also criticized Russia for selling weapons to Azerbaijan. “For what? For whom did we sacrifice our sovereignty, when being a CSTO member, a member of the EEU, we participated in all the dead international organizations invented by Russia at their request, urging, and demand, sacrificing our sovereignty for security?”
Read also
Kristine Poghosyan asked about how if he holds the position of the deputy chairman of the commission, how he will hold meetings with his Russian counterparts. Artur Ghazinyan answered that when Russia decided to sell $4 billion worth of weapons, as an Armenian citizen he was indignant, he could not understand how Armenia is a CSTO and EEU member but Russia could sell that amount of weapons to Azerbaijan. If so many weapons are sold to Russia today, he will express his indignation again.
Hripsime Jebejyan
