Pashinyan: No document implies Karabakh conflict has been resolved

PanARMENIAN.Net - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that there is no international document that states that the Karabakh conflict has been resolved, adding that the discussion of a document for the resolution of the conflict does not mean that it has been resolved.

Pashinyan made the statements in response to questions posed to him during an interview with Armenian Public Television (via Asbarez), presumably in response to separate claims by both Russian and Azerbaijani authorities who have insisted that the conflict has been resolved.

Since the 2020 War, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has claimed on numerous occasions that the Karabakh conflict has been resolved after Azerbaijan’s so-called victory in the war. Following Azerbaijan’s attack on Artsakh in September of this year, and the forced mass exodus of Artsakh Armenians, Aliyev has said that the conflict has “once and for all” been resolved.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities, including President Vladimir Putin, have said that by recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity—that includes Artsakh—Pashinyan himself has rendered the Karabakh conflict resolution issue moot.

“There has never been any document on table that has stipulated a resolution to the Karabakh conflict in the event of its signing,” Pashinyan said during an interview on Armenia’s Public Television.

“All documents, beginning from the [OSCE Minks Group-proposed] ‘Madrid Principles,’ have stipulated that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has not been resolved,” added Pashinyan.

The prime minister said that there was only one document, the signing of which could have been deemed a resolution to the conflict. He said that was the 1999 document that would have exchanged Meghri for Artsakh—“Meghri is ceded to Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh is united with Armenia.”

Pashinyan said that these documents were specifically worded such so that “the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can remain a dangling sword over Armenia, and maybe even over Azerbaijan.”

Pashinyan explained that he and his government were calling for the “lowering of the benchmark” for the Artsakh negotiations, “because we wanted our ideas about self-determination to become aligned with the international community’s notions about self-determination.”

He said that the notion of self-determination was introduced during a summit in Lisbon in 1996.