Pashinyan: Negotiation Papers to Be Published Before Year’s End

YEREVAN — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that the negotiation papers will be made public before the end of the year, responding to recent interviews given by former Armenian Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.

“The recent statements by R.K. and S.S. confirm once again that the Karabakh issue was used by certain forces as a leash to tie the Republic of Armenia to a ‘nearby tree.’ Concepts such as the rights of peoples and historical justice were merely smoke screens to conceal the real objective,” the Prime Minister wrote on his Facebook page.

“All the proposals to stop the war were, in fact, about shortening that leash. The ultimate goal of this process was to bring an end to Armenia’s statehood. According to that script, the Karabakh conflict was supposed to conclude only through the loss of Armenian statehood. The Republic of Armenia, thanks to the sacrifices of our martyrs and the historical awareness of our people in Armenia and Karabakh, managed to escape that scenario,” Pashinyan stated.

In recent days, Armenia’s second and third presidents have given interviews discussing the 44-day war and the negotiation process. In his interview with TV5, Robert Kocharyan said: “To me, it was clear that everything was being done to provoke a war. First of all, this was the result of the failure of the negotiation process, which occurred at Armenia’s initiative—Armenia refused to negotiate. For the first time in the entire negotiation process, one of the sides refused even to discuss the submitted document. That document was presented in the summer of 2019. At the time, Nikol Pashinyan said that we would start from a zero point and let negotiations be held with Karabakh. By refusing to negotiate the 2019 document, he effectively erased nearly 30 years of negotiation progress.”