“Serzh Sargsyan left a legacy where the right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination was guaranteed, the interim status of Artsakh was guaranteed; all this was done before Nikol Pashinyan came to power,” said RPA Deputy Chairman Armen Ashotyan at the Hayeli press club, contradicting the thesis voiced by Nikol Pashinyan in the National Assembly again that the “former” had handed over Artsakh with their negotiating legacy, that the final, interim statuses of Artsakh were in question.
Citing the examples of Kosovo and East Timor, the opposition figure stated that there was no need for Azerbaijan’s consent for any status of Artsakh, as there is no precedent when a part of a state wants to secede, with the consent of the former metropolis. As for the interim status of Artsakh, it was also confirmed by Nikol Pashinyan in 2020 at his press conference in Kapan, where he read the negotiation package left by Serzh Sargsyan – referendum, interim status.
The most important thing, according to Armen Ashotyan, is that all that would happen with the mandate of the international peacekeeping forces. “So what if Aliyev would have agreed to a referendum? Artsakh, Karvachar, and Lachin would have remained Armenian, not to mention Shushi and the rest. All this would be guaranteed by a peacekeeping force endowed with an international mandate, and Artsakh would have an intermediate status recognized in the world. Not to see all this and to say that it was very bad, in the case when today we have a crumpled second Armenian state…” Armen Ashotyan also considers Nikol Pashinyan’s assertion that the new referendum called into question the people of Artsakh in 1991 “perfect immorality,” saying that the referendum had already achieved its goal, making Artsakh a subject of international politics and even an unrecognized state. He added that the second referendum would already be internationally recognized. He at least considers it immoral to state that the referendum without restrictions on the agenda did not guarantee that people who lost fathers, sisters, and brothers in the Artsakh wars could vote to join Azerbaijan.
“Nikol argues that Artsakh should be given to Azerbaijan, more diligently, with more immoral justifications than Aliyev did,” said Armen Ashotyan, saying that Nikol Pashinyan is trying to “throw” the issue into the pockets of the former presidents of Armenia, but everything is political. He demands that before speculating on the April 2016 war, to publish the conclusion of the NA Investigative Committee, he states that all the speculations have been refuted in that committee and that is the reason why the conclusion is not published. Ashotyan considers one of the most ridiculous statements in Pashinyan’s speech to be the statement that his proposed peace agenda has no alternative, but that peace is not guaranteed either. According to the opposition figure, Nikol Pashinyan with his statements thinks the Armenian people are backwards people who live day-by-day hunting.
Read also
Nelly GRIGORYAN
