During the question-and-answer session with the government, in the National Assembly of Armenia Wednesday, opposition MP Artur Khachatryan told Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that in 2019 there was a fairly good document on the negotiating table for Armenia regarding resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but Armenia seemed to have rejected it.

In response, Pashinyan said: “It is very important to read and understand what is written because what you said is the exact opposite of what is written. In no negotiation package has it ever been written that the referendum you mentioned should take place in Karabakh. On the contrary, it is written that a people’s referendum should express the will of the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh. The commentary was that, and you can see its reference in the same package published in [ex-president] Serzh Sargsyan’s letter, that the proposed referendum, according to Azerbaijan, should take place throughout the entire territory of Azerbaijan. What does the ‘entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh’ mean? It also means the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh.

I won’t even say that it is a fundamental question when that referendum would take place, would it happen or not. The wording that ‘it cannot have any restriction’ also means that any status of Nagorno-Karabakh could exist and was not planned. And what status of Nagorno-Karabakh could have been planned is specified in the same package at the OSCE 1996 Lisbon summit, where it is said the position of the international community that Nagorno-Karabakh should make use of the right to self-determination and receive a self-governing status within Azerbaijan. What you are saying is part of 20–25 years of propaganda speech in Armenia, which has absolutely nothing to do with the published package or reality.”

Also, Pashinyan repeated his point that if any proposal was good, then the Armenian authorities at the time should have gone for solutions. “At the time, you should have gone for solutions. If it was a good proposal and you did not go for solutions, then you must answer to the [Armenian] people why you did not go for solutions. And if it was a bad proposal, any proposal was worse than the previous one. The 2019 document is not an independent document. It was not presented to me as a new proposal from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. This document was presented to me in response to my inquiries that ‘Okay, here are all these documents. What is the summary description of the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiation process content at the time I became prime minister?’” Pashinyan said.

He added: “The 2019 document expresses the logic of the previous period. (...). This package confirms that what I have said is based on concrete facts. We began discussing, understanding the content of the negotiation package. It is here where I asked whether Nagorno-Karabakh could not be within Azerbaijan under this package, and I received the answer that it could if Azerbaijan agreed. In all packages, the dissolution of the existing status of Nagorno-Karabakh at that time was planned. At the time when the Armenian side agreed to determine the status through a future referendum, it means that the December 10, 1991, referendum was not canceled at the same time.”