Pashinyan: Azerbaijan taking step back from agreements

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan is taking a step back from agreements reached with Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said in an interview with The Telegraph.

Pashinyan made the reamrks when asked whether Azerbaijan has claims against Armenian territory.

In a recent interview, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that after the capture of Nagorno-Karabakh he hoped that in principle there was no longer any barrier to peace. He also said that if he sees any sign of Armenia re-arming, he will launch a military action against Armenia, he reaffirmed his demand for a corridor through the territory of Armenia to Nakhichevan, he ruled out retreating of his troops from the territory inside Armenia, from strategic heights, saying that he needs these areas so that he can keep an eye on Armenian intentions. Then he rejected Pashinyan’s proposal to draw a border based on the last Soviet military maps, stressing that he would rather talk about maps from the earlier periods of Sovietization, because he claimed Azerbaijan lost a lot of territory at that time.

“I publicly assessed the statements made by the President of Azerbaijan in an interview given to Azerbaijani TV media at the beginning of January 2024 as a blow to the peace process, but I described a little while ago that this blow was not a standalone process and it started, firstly, with ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, and secondly, with the refusal to take part in the Granada meeting, continued by the rejection to participate in the Brussels meeting and the subsequent refusals to attend meetings,” Pashinyan said.

“I also want to note that I recently responded to those statements of the President of Azerbaijan and I need to state once again that having an army is the sovereign right of every state, and the Republic of Armenia, just like any sovereign state, has the right to have a strong and combat-ready army, with the understanding that that the Republic of Armenia is creating an army to fortify its territorial integrity and sovereignty, independence and statehood. Basically, we have shown with our political positions that we recognize the territorial integrity of all the countries of our region and we expect the same from all the countries of our region, especially given that there is a signed, adopted document regarding it. See, when I was talking about the Prague quadrilateral statement, that's exactly what the Prague quadrilateral statement is about. To talk about the territories at the time of joining the Soviet Union, you know, I think that discussions about the period of becoming part of the Soviet Union are not relevant at all in this context. Why? Because I have already said that the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan was recorded in writing in tripartite and quadrilateral formats, which state that the two countries recognize each other's territorial integrity on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration.”

Pashinyan noted that if Azerbaijan's statement is that it does not recognize any document it has signed and adopted, it must announce it publicly.

“In other words, as I said, I know that there are those analyses, those interviews and so on and so forth, and what they mean, and I can give a political assessment as well, and I also say that there are analyzes according to which Azerbaijan is taking a step back from the reached agreements. But as long as Azerbaijan does not announce, in particular, about withdrawing its signature from the Sochi and Prague statements, then it is very clear that Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other's territorial integrity based on the 1991 Alma-Ata declaration and any declaration that contradicts this logic is not legitimate,” he added.