The former authorities of Armenia are guilty of delegitimizing the procedures by which Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a meeting of the National Assembly during the government hour on Wednesday, answering questions from deputies from the ruling Civil Contract party.
Earlier, a controversy ensued between Pashinyan and a deputy from the Armenia opposition bloc, a member of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun party Armen Rustamyan, during which the head of government promised to reveal some scandalous details of the negotiations. However, the opposition left the hall that day, and Pashinyan did not finish, saying that the exposure would take place in their presence.
At the request of Hasmik Hakobyan, MP from the ruling party, the Head of Government decided to open the brackets, despite the fact that there was no opposition in the hall.
Pashinyan, in particular, recalled that the results of the referendum on September 2, 1991 and the adoption of the constitution on December 10, 1991 were laid as the basis for the foundation of the negotiation process on Karabakh.
“However, in the so-called ‘Madrid principles’ on the Karabakh settlement states that the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh will be determined by a referendum, and the Armenian authorities agreed with this. Thus, they delegitimized the 1991 referendum,” he said.
In his opinion, when the previous authorities, in mutual agreement with Baku, agreed to hold a referendum, they, in fact, cut down the branch on which the Armenian side had been sitting all this time.
“If we rightly state that Nagorno-Karabakh has never been part of Azerbaijan, then why are we discussing with the same Azerbaijan the issue of obtaining a new status. Moreover, we also say that this should happen on the terms agreed with Baku,” Pashinyan complained.
He believes that the government of Armenia, which acted in 2007, whose representatives are blocking the streets today, in fact, gave Azerbaijan the right to veto the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Prime Minister noted that it was for this reason that, even before the start of the 44-day war, he spoke about the need to understand the essence of the ‘Madrid principles’.
“It was necessary to understand what they mean,” the head of the government said.
