ArmInfo.The negotiation approach according to which Armenia recognized the need to withdraw its armed forces from part of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in order to ensure the status of another part within the borders of the NKAO outside Azerbaijan initially led to a dead end.
A similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by ex-Artsakh Foreign Minister, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Arman Melikyan. "To our great regret, Nikol Pashinyan's government, in fact, remained within the framework of this negotiating logic. And, moreover, introduced certain destructive elements into it. And declaring in his interview that the content of his negotiations with Azerbaijan was reduced to discussing that Armenia ex-President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan will receive, not yield, apparently seeks to emphasize that for the Armenian side, the settlement of the conflict does not have a territorial component. And, accordingly, the solution of the conflict requires the granting of an independent status to Artsakh exclusively within the borders of the former NKAO, "he stressed .
Melikyan assesses this statement of the ex-president as evidence of the absence for him and his associates of the issue of the territorial integrity of the Republic of Artsakh. In other words, recognizing the fact of the occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan, official Yerevan openly declared to Baku that it would return them only if Azerbaijan recognized the right of the NKAO to self-determination and, as a consequence, the right to independence.
Such a negotiating logic, within the framework of which Armenia tried to legitimize the secession of a part of one territory of Azerbaijan, returning it to another, according to the diplomat's estimates, could not be acceptable for Baku from the very beginning. "I have repeatedly spoken about the harmfulness of such negotiation tactics in the past. However, the leaders of Armenia persistently passed these tactics on the baton to each other. And as a result, through joint efforts, they brought the situation to the current result," he stressed.
"During the period when I served as Foreign Minister of Artsakh in 2004-2005, after the death of the elder Aliyev and the negotiations in Key West, the negotiations were paused. And there were no specific settlement programs. Having already received as an adviser to the President of Artsakh on foreign policy I immediately resigned for information on some of the details of the Madrid Principles, in particular regarding territorial problems, and then in 2008 I tried to put into circulation an alternative approach to resolving the conflict as a presidential candidate in Armenia. Unfortunately, I cannot achieve the desired result. succeeded ", - summed up Melikyan.