ArmInfo.On April 14, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ruben Rubinyan reacted to a document with the proposals of the OSCE Minsk Group to the parties to the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, published by the office of 3rd President Serzh Sargsyan,
It should be noted that in the published fragment of one of the documents on Karabakh it was said that "the declaration is based on the principle of a package agreement. The provisions contained in it form a single whole. Their implementation cannot take place in isolation from each other." Thus, Sargsyan refuted the statements of the Prime Minister of the Republic Nikol Pashinyan, who, today in Parliament, stated that "back in 1997 it was planned to divide the issue into two parts, first the Karabakh issue, then the peace agreement. " "The same goes for the 2016 package, the same goes for the 2018 package. This package says very clearly that the initial principles are agreed upon, and then negotiations between the governments begin with the participation of representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh. Speaking of NK representatives, they meant NK Armenians, Azerbaijanis of NK. Then the Azerbaijanis of NK would sit at the negotiating table, and there would be no settlement until the issue of Shushi, which has been on the table since 1996, is resolved. Serzh Sargsyan was going to surrender Shushi? If not, then a war would start, and then, in addition to the territories, part of Karabakh would have to be surrendered," he said.
"And how does Serzh Sargsyan's Office justify that they didn't actually negotiate on a phased option - by publishing a document for 2016, the title of which at the very beginning says that this is a document on the first stage of the conflict resolution and further steps, but they give the following justification - since this text says that the decision or steps are in a single package, they cannot be separated from each other, therefore, this is a package document," Rubinyan said.
The NA Vice Speaker stated that the publication of Serzh Sargsyan's apparatus is nothing but a trick. "Even before the 2018 revolution, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, regarding the process of resolving the conflict, several times said that a phased approach was being proposed. In response to this, among other things, Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan reported that a phased solution was being discussed in batch application, which in itself is a strange statement," Rubinyan said. Meanwhile, according to Rubinyan, Edward Nalbandyan's statement could be logical only in one case, if the parties came to a decision on a package solution of this document or on a package solution on all components of the conflict.
Firstly, as the Vice Speaker pointed out, the difference between the staged and package approaches is that the staged option resolves the conflict in stages, i.e. at the first stage, one of the components can be solved. At the same time, it is not known how and when the next component will receive a solution. The package version of the solution assumes either a single solution in one stage of all the components of the conflict, or, at a minimum, an agreement is reached on the solution of all components, but they are implemented in stages.
Rubinyan insists that this document did not fix what status Artsakh should have, when, where and with whose participation a referendum on the final status of Artsakh should be held, what issue should be raised at the referendum. "That is, we are dealing with the exact opposite of a package solution, when there is a solution option that does not describe how, when, by whom the central, cornerstone problem of the conflict will be resolved. Therefore, Serzh Sargsyan discussed a pure staged aproach," he said.