Armenian PM accuses ex-President of messing up Karabakh talks

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has blamed former President Serzh Sargsyan for the failure of negotiations on the settlement of the Nagorno-Krabakh conflict.

Pashinyan made the remarks during a Q&A session in parliament, when lawmaker Armen Rustamyan from the opposition Armenia bloc read to him the Resistance Movement's demand to resign.

"It was Serzh Sargsyan who announced the future war from this podium on April 17, 2018, admitting that the negotiation process does not inspire optimism or has rather grown stagnant because Azerbaijan's demands were unrealistic and unacceptable for us," Pashinyan said.

"It was Serzh Sargsyan who announced from this tribune about the future war, maintaining that we should not be hoping that Azerbaijan will not try to resolve the Artsakh issue militarily."

According to him, in order to prevent the war, the Armenian side would have to accept the unrealistic, unacceptable demands of Baku, which included the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

The Prime Minister promised to make an important revelation but the session was interrupted when the opposition decided to leave the hall.

Pashinyan himself staged a massive disobedience campaign back in the spring of 2018 and removed then Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan who had been in power for 10 years. The PM, however, came under fire after signing a statement with the Russian and Azerbaijani Presidents to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh almost 45 days after the start of the military hostilities. Under the deal, the Armenian side was forced to cede all the regions surrounding Karabakh to Azerbaijan, having lost a part of Karabakh itself in hostilities.