Pashinyan: Withdrawal of Karabakh army means withdrawal of Armenians

PanARMENIAN.Net - The withdrawal of the Defense Army from Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) means the withdrawal of the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, March 31, commenting on Azerbaian's long-standing demands on the matter

According to the PM, such demands explain Azerbaijan's policy of getting rid of everything Armenian in Nagorno-Karabakh, including millennia-old churches, khachkars and inscriptions.

"And the events in Parukh show that the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh need to be protected, otherwise they will become victims of genocide," Pashinyan said.

"In the past, we have proposed solutions that would reduce or eliminate such a conflict situation and resolve the issue of the militarized line of contact, I mean the events related to Parukh. The essence of the proposal is the following. To record the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, to record the obligation of the parties not to cross that line of contact, to remove all military positions along the line, to create a demilitarized zone and to strengthen the implementation of agreements with concrete guarantees. This proposal was not accepted, but the relevance of the guarantees is obvious especially now."

Azerbaijan has broken into Nagorno-Karabakh, and the incursion has left three Armenian soldiers dead and at least 14 others injured. On March 24, Azerbaijan stormed into the zone of the responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers stationed in the area and is refusing to completely withdraw its forces from strategic heights.