Armenia has never conducted direct negotiations with Azerbaijan - Hayk Mamijanyan

ArmInfo.Armenia has never held direct negotiations with Azerbaijan, but interacted with the international community, which was supposed to put pressure on Baku to reach certain agreements. This was stated by the leader of the opposition faction 'With Honor' Hayk Mamijanyan at a briefing with journalists on December 26, commenting on the allegations that the former presidents allegedly discussed the issue of transferring Artsakh to Azerbaijan since 1994.

In this regard, he recalled that the third president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan stated during a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that Artsakh would never become part of Azerbaijan.  Mamijanyan also mentioned the words of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev from the fall of 2016 that he was forced behind the scenes to recognize the independence of Artsakh.

"Nikol Pashinyan knew for sure that the former presidents would not participate in debates with him. Their statements indicate all the reasons why they refused to discuss. If he really wanted to  participate in the debates, then political prisoner Armen Ashotyan has been inviting him to discuss the Artsakh issue for four years now," Mamijanyan recalled in this regard.

The oppositionist expressed his conviction that the topic of the  debates was planned in advance by the team of the Prime Minister of Armenia and written into the scenario, which predetermines further actions. "I suppose that he will soon find some paper from a Slovak analytical center, ordered by Azerbaijan, which will say that since 1994 there has been talk about Artsakh being part of Azerbaijan. I am sure that they have foreseen this. This is just a show that has been going on for several months, and with which they will try to distract the attention of citizens from the topic of negotiations," the oppositionist explained.

At the same time, the head of the "I have the honor" faction  expressed his conviction that the only way to prevent Azerbaijan's demands, including the return of Azerbaijanis to the so-called "Western Azerbaijan", is a change of power. At the same time, he noted that the opposition will not be able to do this without the support of broad sections of the population.

Speaking about the geopolitical situation, he noted that it does  influence events within the country, but only as a factor of  influence. "In order to change the political force in the country,  approval is not needed," Mamijanyan said.

The oppositionist also noted that holding early elections is  impossible until Pashinyan signs a peace treaty with Azerbaijan. However, he added that at the moment this is not a topic worth focusing on, since the elections will be held in any case the way Pashinyan needs.

Touching upon the statements of Pashinyan and the Speaker of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan about the possibility of satisfying Azerbaijan's demands regarding the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, Mamijanyan recalled that decisions in the OSCE are made on the basis of consensus, which means that this cannot be done without Armenia's participation. "However, Azerbaijan does not demand that Armenia does not object to this proposal, but that it becomes the initiator, and Pashinyan agrees with this," the faction leader summed up.

Earlier, Nikol Pashinyan stated that since 1994, that is, after the  ceasefire, the negotiation process was conducted exclusively around the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The offices of the RA presidents, under whom the negotiation process was taking place, reacted harshly to these statements by the Armenian prime minister. In response to the criticism, Pashinyan invited the presidents to a public debate on this issue. The offices of the three Armenian presidents refused to hold a public debate, advising Pashinyan to look at the World Wide Web, where all the information about the progress and content of the negotiations around the Nagorno-Karabakh  conflict has long been publicly available.

Pashinyan, however, did not calm down and called on the former presidents of Armenia to take advantage of his proposal for debates, or to retire and stop commenting on his theses.

We will add that independent experts have already laughed at these statements of the Armenian Prime Minister, asking a rather rhetorical question: "Why then was there a Karabakh movement to annex Artsakh to Armenia and a war, if immediately after the victorious war of the early 1990s, the Armenian authorities began negotiations on the transfer of the NKR to the Azerbaijani side." According to them, it turns out that for 30 years the Aliyev couple refused to take Artsakh.