Pashinyan responds to accusations of his readiness to "surrender  Artsakh"

ArmInfo. On April 22, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded to accusations of his readiness to "surrender Artsakh" at a government meeting.

As Nikol Pashinyan stated, after November 9, 2020, before each of his  foreign visits, rumors spread that he is going to sign a document on  the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, under which Artsakh will be  surrendered to Azerbaijan. "I declare with all responsibility that  during this period there have been and are no projects on the  Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, be sure to pay attention, a project or a  draft that is on the table or is in circulation. I mean after  November 9, 2020," Pashinyan said.

As for the "surrender of Artsakh", Pashinyan, "making a thousand  apologies", said that he is forced to state that "Artsakh is not an  object, not a thing to surrender or not to surrender." "Artsakh is,  first of all, the people living there. If we had surrendered Artsakh,  then after the 44-day war we would not have spent tens of billions of  drams to ensure the return of Artsakh people their homes," the head  of government noted. 

According to him, if he intended to surrender Artsakh, then, on the  contrary, he would simply not do anything after the war, and the  surrender of Artsakh would essentially become a reality. "On the  contrary, we are investing in Artsakh in unprecedented volumes,  because to preserve Artsakh means that the people of Artsakh remain  to live there. To preserve Armenia means to make sure that the  Armenians live in the country and vice versa return those who left.  And this is impossible without peace," Pashinyan said .

Pashinyan once again ruled out that there is a document more or less  close to signing, which will be signed without a wide public  discussion, including with all sectors of Artsakh society. "This is a  guarantee, an iron guarantee that the fate of Artsakh cannot be  decided behind the backs of the people. In this regard, pessimists  cite as an example the tripartite statement of November 9, 2020,  which was signed without wide public discussion. This is a strange  comparison, because in a war within hours, sometimes minutes,  decisions had to be made to save the lives of thousands of Artsakh  residents, 25 thousand servicemen and the evicted Armenians from  Artsakh," Pashinyan said. As the head of the Armenian government  pointed out, the entire policy of the RA authorities is currently  aimed at not being forced to make decisions in such conditions.

"At the moment, all the documents that are the subject of  negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are in the public domain.  These are 5 points passed to us by Azerbaijan, and our reaction to  them, which, in fact, have been published many times. We will  continue to do so as long as the boundaries of diplomatic ethics and  ethics of interstate relations are allowed," he said.

Nikol Pashinyan touched upon, in his words, speculations on the topic  of his statement on the call of international partners to lower the  bar on the status of Artsakh. Pashinyan expressed his bewilderment at  the fact that his opponents say "why international partners have not  come forward with such proposals before".  As the prime minister  noted, the proposals put forward by the OSCE Minsk Group in 2016 are  nothing more than a document on lowering the bar, since the meaning  of this document is to postpone the issue of the status of  Nagorno-Karabakh for an indefinite period. And we were talking about  decades. "The OSCE Lisbon summit in 1996, the idea of a single state  in 1999, the Key West process in 2001, the Madrid principles of 2007  were also a call for lowering: Direct and indirect calls for lowering  the bar were contained in various documents adopted by various  international bodies since the 1990s. And the fact that the  significance of these facts was carefully hidden from our society  does not mean that they did not exist," Pashinyan said.

According to him, in the short, medium and long term, the strategy of  the Armenian authorities is to ensure a situation that will allow the  people of Artsakh to live in Artsakh. "Any solution to the  Nagorno-Karabakh conflict or any situation that has developed in  Nagorno-Karabakh, which will not only not provide, but will not  guarantee these conditions, is unacceptable for us, will never be  acceptable," the prime minister said.