YEREVAN. – I’ve always worked toward not unduly linking domestic processes with big geopolitical processes, but this is the case when it makes sense to pay some attention to it. Viktor Soghomonyan, head of the office of Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan, noted this at a press conference on Monday. He stated this when asked to what extent he considers real the claims that there is a “Bolton Plan”—named after US National Security Advisor John Bolton—to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict, and Kocharyan could have gotten in the way its implementation.

“President Kocharyan received the Karabakh [conflict] settlement process at a situation when we had the Lisbon document in 1996, where Armenia, of course, had vetoed, but it was clear that the international community sees Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan,” Soghomonyan stressed. “When he [First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan] left the office of President [in 1998], we had a document. It’s about the Madrid document which Yerevan did not agree to until the end, said that it has great reservations about that document. But, nonetheless, it’s specified in that document that the future of Nagorno-Karabakh will be determined by way of the expression of the will of its population, [and] whose results we can assume.”

So, as per the head of the office of Armenia’s second President, we have a clash of philosophies with respect to the avenues for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“Not giving in to the existing analyzes, I can’t disregard their connection with reality,” Viktor Soghomonyan added.