YEREVAN. – During the previous government, the Armenian side had a problem in the negotiations: constantly inspiring Azerbaijan hope that it will achieve what it wants as a result of the negotiations. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday stated this at the National Assembly of Armenia while presenting the report on the implementation and results of the government program for 2020, referring to the matter of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict.

He noted that in an interview on December 4, 2020, ex-President Robert Kocharyan stated the following: ‘"A number of examples can be brought. All this together has created a situation where you have not left Azerbaijan a chance to hope that it can achieve something through diplomacy. If you do not leave such a chance, the war remains.’ This is a brilliant sentence that expresses the 20-year diplomacy and negotiation logic of the Armenian side; that is, the Armenian side had a problem in the negotiations: constantly inspiring Azerbaijan hope that it will achieve what it wants as a result of the negotiations. But it wants Karabakh to be part of its cultural or any other status, or if possible, even without it.

If you have been giving hope constantly for 20 years, the time will come for you to live up to that hope; it cannot be so that you give hope for 20 years and do not live up to [it]. This is the biggest failure when the whole Armenian people were inspired that we should give up all our rights, all the results of the Artsakh movement. The most absurd thesis that could have been has bee put into circulation: ‘the worst negotiations are better than the best war.’ It was difficult to invent greater nonsense because worst negotiations lead to the worst war," Pashinyan said.

"I am not even saying that in the time of Robert Kocharyan, himself, in 1997-1998, they not only gave hope to Azerbaijan, but also gave a guarantee, and that guarantee was to exclude Karabakh from the negotiation process. [First President] Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharyan were arguing over who from them left Karabakh out [of the negotiations]. But going to the talks without Karabakh was a guarantee and hope for Azerbaijan that they should achieve their goal. What were they supposed to do? They should have done what we did in 2019, when we announced that we cannot imagine a negotiation and a solution without Karabakh. They had to do it then because at that time Azerbaijan was not ready and could not give a military solution to the problem.

Not only would we have not deceived ourselves that we are resolving the issue through negotiations, but we would have prepared for war in parallel with Azerbaijan," the Armenian PM said.