ArmInfo.On June 15, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, from the rostrum of the parliament, once again accused former authorities of insincerity and that they did not oppose the idea of Nagorno-Karabakh being part of Azerbaijan at one time, but now, being in opposition, they accuse the authorities of betrayal.
Pashinyan stated that throughout the history of the negotiation process, the 2nd and 3rd presidents of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan <and their satellite party Dashnaktsutyun> recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan or were not guided by the principle <Artsakh will never be part of Azerbaijan>.
The prime minister, also shared "evidence substantiating this responsible statement." So, on November 25, 1998, the RA authorities, headed by Robert Kocharyan, agreed to negotiate on the basis of the draft proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, on the so-called. "Common State", which assumed the presence of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and the issuance of passports of the Republic of Azerbaijan to citizens of Artsakh with a special mark of "Nagorno-Karabakh". <They (the former authorities, ed. note) did not rule out that Artsakh could be part of Azerbaijan, moreover agreed with the key logic of the negotiation package, according to which Artsakh should be part of Azerbaijan. Moreover, they thereby ignored the declaration of independence of Artsakh adopted on September 2, 1991, as well as the independence referendum held on December 10 of the same year>, the prime minister said.
According to Pashinyan, after the idea of the "Common State", the issue of exchanging territories was on the negotiating table. Thus, the former government recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan, the prime minister believes. "The essence of this package was that Armenia gives Azerbaijan the Meghri district in the Syunik region, and in return receives Nagorno-Karabakh. That is, if Armenia agreed to transfer part of its sovereign territory to Azerbaijan in order to receive Artsakh, this means that it considers Artsakh to be the territory of Azerbaijan>, he stressed.