
ArmInfo. During his address to the nation, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hinted at new upcoming territorial concessions to Azerbaijan and called for forgetting Artsakh.
During his half-hour address, Pashinyan attempted to tell how wonderful the document he signed in Washington is and how much good it promises for the Armenian people. He assured that by initialing the peace treaty with Azerbaijan on August 8 in Washington, Armenia had established peace in the South Caucasus. According to him, this marks a completely new era for South Caucasus, and the Armenian people, who have never known what peace means, will now be able to personally enjoy it. Pashinyan then proceeded to outline the already published points of this document and address issues raised in Armenian society, such as the return of Armenia's sovereign territories occupied by the enemy in 2021-2023. Speaking about the return of over 200 square kilometers of occupied sovereign Armenian territories, Pashinyan equated the fact of their return to Armenia with the transfer of the so-called Azerbaijani enclaves to Baku, but did not say a word about the Armenian territories occupied by the Azerbaijani side in the early 1990s.
"This reality must be resolved in the demarcation process. But the peace logic, the new logic, is that when we talk about the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia under the control of Azerbaijan, we must also say that there are sovereign territories of Azerbaijan under our control, and this mutual issue must be resolved through the demarcation process," Pashinyan said. He then tried to justify the fact that the document does not mention the Armenian prisoners of war held in Baku, assuring that it is not there because they seek to free these people before the peace treaty is signed.
Then the Armenian Prime Minister touched upon the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and stated that he had previously stated from the rostrum of parliament that Armenia should not continue the Karabakh movement, and he would conduct a policy based on this logic, and those who disagree with this should make a revolution. "The people, that is, you, dear citizens, did not make a revolution because you, like me, understood that peace is impossible without closing the Karabakh issue, that the Karabakh issue was in fact simply used by certain forces as a tool to prevent Armenia from gaining independence, sovereignty, and the formation and development of statehood," Pashinyan said.
The head of the Armenian government also called the idea of the return of Artsakh refugees to Nagorno- Karabakh unrealistic. "In general, I consider the bilateral discussion of the issue of the return of people who have become refugees since the beginning of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to be a dangerous factor that harms the peace that has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Bilateral attempts to discuss these issues will not benefit the refugees themselves, but will become a new source of tension between the states. I have also shared this idea of mine with official Baku. And I would like to note that yes, this is a dangerous and harmful issue for the nascent peace. In my opinion, all those who do not agree with this strategy, willy-nilly, find themselves in the logic of resuming the conflict. Our vision for the future of our compatriots forced to leave Karabakh is as follows: with our support and that of the international community, they should be resettled in the Republic of Armenia, and live, create and establish themselves here as full-fledged citizens of the Republic Armenia," Pashinyan said.
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