“Every minute the situation changes, and the negotiations change the situation every minute. Now Armenia says that there is a population of Artsakh there, which has rights, and the status should be derived from that,” National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan said during a briefing with journalists in the parliament on Tuesday, referring to the question about how during the pre-election campaign the government said that Artsakh will never be part of Azerbaijan, but now it avoids uttering that sentence.
“Or, let me say something else, has anyone spoken since 1998 about Artsakh not being part of Azerbaijan? Since then, the theoretical possibility of Artsakh being part of Azerbaijan has been on the agenda of all the authorities – the ‘Madrid Principles,’” said Alen Simonyan. According to him, he will not say that Artsakh will not be part of Azerbaijan, because it will mean setting a line before and during the talks.
The journalists reminded Simonyan of the photo he published in Akna during Serzh Sargsyan’s administration with the caption, “Aghdam is my homeland.” The journalists asked him if Akna continues to be his homeland. “My grandmother was born in Kars, and Kars is to some extent my homeland. Compare the situation before the war and after that, in the logic of Facebook, the situation in the world has always changed. Serzh Sargsyan did not consider it, but during the whole period of his administration, he tried to tell the public the idea that they had negotiated about the fact that they could not take Artsakh out anymore. That is why he said that he would like the Azerbaijani children to come and live here. He once said that they should not live in border villages, that those 800 hectares do not matter from a tactical point of view. The whole Armenian highland is my homeland,” Alen Simonyan answered.
Then, when the journalists repeated the question, “Is Aghdam your homeland?”, Alen Simonyan accused them of behaving impudently. “I will not answer your question anymore, you are at the level of a Facebook status․․․” The journalist urged him not to insult them and countered that they were only quoting Alen Simonyan’s Facebook status. “I have already answered the question. I will not answer your questions anymore,” Alen Simonyan concluded.
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Luiza Sukiasyan
