Have you ever heard that any leader of Armenia, before Pashinyan, publicly declared that he recognizes Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan? I haven’t heard: And not only me. The heads of diplomacy of the European Union and Russia had not heard anything similar either.
“This is the first time that the leader of Armenia, in this case, Pashinyan, has recognized Nagorno- Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan,” EU High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (in fact, Foreign Minister of that structure) Josep Borrell said on June 24 of this year. “This is the first case” means no such case exists. “At the assemblies held under the auspices of the European Union in October 2022 and May 2023, Armenia recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of the territory of Azerbaijan,” said the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry on July 15 of this year.
Referring to the Declaration of Alma Ata, the “Madrid Principles” and other documents are a trick that is calculated on ignorant people. It is one thing to negotiate or sign some paper that can be interpreted one way or the other, and another thing is to predetermine the outcome of all possible negotiations with one’s statement. This difference is well known to both Prime Minister Pashinyan and the rest of the Civil Contract team. Why is it wrong to predict the outcome? Because when you say that you are ready to give up this one boundary line, the opposite person naturally puts a new boundary line in front of you. In this case, the return of “enclaves,” resettlement of RA with Azerbaijanis, and the “corridor.”
It is also bad because you give Azerbaijan the privilege to do with your compatriots in its “sovereign territory” what the Azerbaijanis want to do. And to blame Artsakh authorities, Russians, Europeans (this time more), and others in the face of a disaster is a manifestation of cynicism.
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Of course, it’s not like that Prime Minister Pashinyan didn’t say the right things in his last press conference. “Armenia has a historical cycle; we are having a state, and then we lose it.” Who can argue with that? It is only sometimes necessary to say by whose extraordinary “talents” we are now in the cycle of “losing.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
