ArmInfo. The approaches of the first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan on the Karabakh issue are known, they caused his resignation from the post of head of state, as well as the complete fiasco of the Armenian National Congress headed by him during the 2017 parliamentary elections. Ex-defense minister Vigen Sargsyan wrote about this on his Facebook page in response to the criticism of Levon Ter-Petrosyan about his ignorance of the essence of the Karabakh conflict.
At the same time, Sargsyan expressed hope that Pashinyan does not share Ter-Petrosyan's well-known approaches to the Karabakh conflict. He again reiterated the need to form a team of professionals to develop a consolidated agenda on foreign policy issues, especially given that the new prime minister had not previously had the opportunity to conduct broad public and narrow professional discussions on issues of the external agenda. According to him, Armenian diplomacy should focus on Artsakh security issues and strengthen its position in the negotiations.
Referring to Ter-Petrosyan's statement that Baku does not try to present Armenia as a side of the conflict, but as a side of the war, Sargsyan said: "In addition to its desire to represent Armenia as a side of the Karabakh war, Baku is trying to transform the conflict as a territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia , for this purpose he constantly uses the term "Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict." Meanwhile, this is a conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan, Armenia is a negotiating party and a guarantor of security on the Armenian people have always stressed that the Karabakh conflict is a people's struggle for self-determination, and I am sure that it will continue to act from this position, "Sargsyan wrote.
Commenting on another remark of Ter-Petrosyan that he - Sarkisyan imagines himself the "godfather" of the "Army-Nation" concept, Sargsyan said: "I never suffered from the mania of being called the" godfather "of something or someone, especially having a centuries-old the history of the "Army-Nation" concept, just tried to do everything possible for its implementation and is proud of the fact that I succeeded in many things. "
It should be noted that in his last interview, Vigen Sargsyan criticized Pashinyan's statements on the Karabakh issue, in particular, the statement that Armenia is a party to the conflict. According to him, this is what Azerbaijan strives for, trying to translate the conflict from the plane of the principle of the people's right to self-determination into the plane of a territorial dispute. In response, the first president of Armenia stated that Vigen Sargsyan is not familiar with the details of the Karabakh conflict, since Armenia was recognized at the international level as a party to the conflict by the final document of the 1994 Budapest Summit of the OSCE. "If the Armenian Defense Minister did not have knowledge about the essence of the Karabakh conflict, the Armenian people should only rejoice that they got rid of it," Ter-Petrosyan said.