ArmInfo. Armenia's authorities will consistently defend the Artsakh Armenians' right, without disregarding other peoples' rights, Armenia's Premier Nikol Pashinyan stated at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday as he commented on Azerbaijan's proposals for normalization of relations.
Armenia received the proposals on March 10, after the gas pipeline supplying gas to Artsakh had been exploded.
"On March 14, we promptly responded to the proposals in written form, applied to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs for their assistance in peace talks with Azerbaijan. On March 21, 2022, Armenia's foreign minister announced Armenia's general assessment of Azerbaijan's proposals: there is nothing unacceptable to us in the proposals submitted on March 10. Quite another matter is that the proposals do not answer all the questions of the Armenian-Azerbaijani comprehensive peace agenda. In our response to the OSCE Minsk Group we supplemented the agenda and we are ready for negotiations on this basis," Mr Pashinyan said. However, the same evening, after official Yerevan publicly presented its position, Azerbaijan disrupted gas supply to Artsakh.
Armenia's radical opposition is critical of Armenia's authorities for accepting the principle of territorial integrity as a principle of normalization of relations.
"The criticism is really strange as on November 19, 1999, the then President Robert Kocharyan, after returning from the OSCE Istanbul Summit, in response to a reporter, said: 'If we speak of territorial integrity, we must not at the same speak against it. We too have a territory and we too need respect for this principle'," Mr Pashinyan said.
Armenia's third president Serzh Sargsyan held negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh for a long period, accepting the principle of territorial integrity.
"So no speculations are acceptable," Armenia's premier said.
The Nagorno-Karabakh problem has never been a territorial dispute. It is a problem of right.
"We will consistently defend the Artsakh Armenians' right, without disregarding other peoples' rights, because we are not fascists, as Serzh Sargsyan rightly said in one of his recent interviews," Mr Pashinyan said.