Human rights activist: Slogans about peace should be based on a clear  program

ArmInfo.The slogans of the Armenian government about peace should be based on a clear and understandable program for everyone. Moreover, it should be  understandable not only to the Armenian society and the people of  Artsakh, but also to the international community. First Human Rights  Defender of Armenia, human rights activist Larisa Alaverdyan,  expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

"And if the government does not have such a program, or it does  exist, but it is kept secret, then this is automatically a reason for  declaring legally invalid any document signed as a result of  negotiations in conditions in which the public knows practically  nothing about their content. As it happened in 1992, when a decision  was made to deprive Yerevan, in particular the ANM party (Armenian  National Movement), of the right to sign any document, as a result of  which Artsakh would become part of Azerbaijan," she stressed.

Alaverdyan considers the arguments of the current Armenian  government, according to which Yerevan is not even going to sign a  document on Artsakh becoming part of Azerbaijan, to be fairy tales.  According to the human rights activist, the signing by Armenia of a  document recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan will  mean one thing in the current situation - Artsakh is becoming an  internal problem for Baku.  Aliyev has recently stated quite  unambiguously about this.

In this light, the implementation of the points of the peace  agreement proposed by Baku, according to Alaverdyan, is possible only  in case of prior permission and determination of the status of  Artsakh.  Moreover, the status for which the Artsakh Armenians have  been fighting for decades, having reached an intermediate status as a  result of this struggle, allowing them to preserve the territorial  integrity of Artsakh.  "And the current government refused all this,  the results of this long-term struggle. They refused very cynically,  signing a tripartite statement dated November 9, 2020. I consider  this decision of Pashinyan as politically short-sighted, which can  lead both Artsakh and Armenia to even more serious consequences,"  she remarked.

According to the human rights activist, even today Artsakh has every  right to demand and requires consideration not of the right to  self-determination, but of its well-deserved independence from  Azerbaijan over all these decades. And the fact that Armenia does not  raise the issue of the fact of obvious aggression on the part of  Azerbaijan and Turkey, the fact of their occupation of Armenian  territories, in her opinion, does not mean at all that another state  cannot do this. The latter, according to Alaverdyan, involves the  search by the Armenian socio-political elite of a state ready, at  least, to take on such an initiative. In order to make a breakthrough  in the most difficult geopolitical, political and socio-economic  situation imposed on Armenia and Artsakh by Turkey, Azerbaijan and  its own leadership.