Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the RA Security Council, announced in the parliament on December 8, “There is still no final decision whether a peace treaty or an attempt will resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, or whether we will create a separate international mechanism.” The journalists’ question was as follows: to what extent is the Artsakh problem related to the RA-Azerbaijan “peace treaty”. The secretary explained: “Until now, there is no clarity about the mentioned mechanism. And there is no clarity on whether we will do it with the peace treaty or outside of the treaty. Therefore, I don’t have a clear answer now. Yerevan is in favor of creating security guarantees to create a mechanism for a discussion between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan regarding rights and security. A peace treaty or another international mechanism can fix it.”
Gegham Manukyan, a member of the National Assembly “Armenia” faction, believes that what the SC secretary said and other officials’ statements often do not match. “It was regularly announced that the peace agreement is already ready, and it refers to the recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Or they referred to the Declaration of Alma-Ata. Our opinion: From the beginning, the issue of the determination of Artsakh status should have been the subject of the RA-Azerbaijan negotiations and agreement. It should be recorded from the beginning that recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan does not imply the final forgetting of the status of Artsakh. Still, the question remains,” said Gegham Manukyan in a conversation with “Aravot” and added, “now, if it is so, it is much better, but, unfortunately, Prague and the events before it prove that RA had agreements with Azerbaijan in a completely different way.”
“We also reminded the Civil Contract faction MPs Eduard Aghajanyan’s and Maria Karapetyan’s statement on December 6 that the RA-Azerbaijan border exists and has nothing to do with the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Otherwise, we are turning the case into a territorial issue. Gegham Manukyan emphasized this regard. “The most dangerous thing is that since March 2022, RA spoke for the first time about the Alma-Ata declaration at the level of Minister of Foreign Affairs. I would understand it if RA talked about it and Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, stressing that the Supreme Council singled out the Artsakh issue in 1992, emphasized Artsakh’s right to self-determination and that Artsakh confirmed its independence through a referendum before the Alma-Ata Declaration. I would understand that. But when the Alma-Ata Declaration is the basis for discussing territorial integrity in all official statements, it turns out that Artsakh’s right to self-determination is forgotten.”
Luiza SUKIASYAN
