Heritage Party has issued the following statement:

“From the fair solution to the Artsakh issue to the imperative for dialogue in Armenia

On June 17, first Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, co-founder of Heritage Party and chairman of the political council of Heritage Party Raffi K. Hovannisian participated in the 7th meeting of Eastern Partnership leaders of the European People’s Party. Heritage Party presents parts of the main messages of his speech.

A. Peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the letter of the deputies of the Council of Europe that was a surprise and was conspicuous for us Armenians, regarding the new road connecting Armenia with Artsakh, which is an imperative for ensuring vital security of the people of Artsakh and neutralizing the risks of blockade on the part of Azerbaijan

Raffi Hovannisian called on his European colleagues to show a more reasonable and impartial approach to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict respecting international rights, emphasizing that there has to be an exclusively peaceful and fair solution to the issue, based on the concept of self-determination, sovereignty, territorial integrity and international recognition of Artsakh.

B. Raffi Hovannisian also touched upon Turkey’s policy of denial and hostility, substantiating this with the need to leave the 1921 Bolshevik-Turkish treaties depriving the Armenian people of their homeland.

C. Giving an evaluation of the situation in Armenia, Raffi Hovannisian emphasized that it is necessary to reveal electoral falsifications of all times and the people who organized them, ruling out the selective approach, and unequivocally stressed that it is necessary to respect the presumption of innocence in this major process.

Heritage Party is concerned over the risk of social polarization during the pandemic, and thus, during the state of emergency, it attaches importance to the guaranteeing of political and civil rights, setting forth the imperative of pan-national dialogue. Only by ruling out politicized justice will we Armenians be able to rule out the repetition of the bad history. For the sake of Armenia, we Armenians cannot allow return to the past.