Ex-official rejects claims Karabakh issue closed

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former Secretary of the Artsakh Security Council Samvel Babayan has criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statements on Nagorno-Karabakh, saying the issue remains unresolved and cannot be closed by political declarations.

Babayan wrote on Facebook that Pashinyan’s positions on Nagorno-Karabakh are well known, but during his recent remarks in Germany he “crossed a new dangerous line” by claiming that those who speak about the unresolved Karabakh issue want a new war.

According to Babayan, neither Pashinyan nor Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has the authority to decide whether the Karabakh issue is closed or open. He stressed that Pashinyan does not have a mandate to speak on behalf of the self-determined people of Nagorno-Karabakh and has no right to close the issue “to suit someone’s political preferences.”

“When you say that those who speak about the Karabakh issue want a new war, you are not mistaken, you are consciously distorting reality,” Babayan wrote, adding that the Karabakh people’s issue is unresolved and this is a fact, not a slogan.

He argued that war emerges from ignored problems, warning that bypassed issues become “unexploded mines.” Babayan accused the authorities of attempting to reframe defeat as “peace” and silencing dissenting voices for political expediency.

Babayan also criticized comparisons between the internationally recognized self-determined people of Nagorno-Karabakh and what he called the false narrative of “Western Azerbaijan,” as well as statements linking Armenia’s public debt to support for forcibly displaced Karabakh Armenians, which he described as incitement of internal hostility.

Reviewing Pashinyan’s past statements, Babayan said the prime minister had shifted positions repeatedly on Artsakh, ultimately failing to uphold responsibilities toward its security and governance. He claimed this resulted in an entire people being left without statehood, status, or future, forcing displacement.

Babayan concluded that the rights of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are inherent and cannot be limited, bargained away, or silenced by temporary political calculations, emphasizing that truth is not a call for war but a refusal to accept defeat.