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.