Armenia’s former foreign minister Vartan Oskanian posted a video where he commented on PM Nikol Pashinyan's claims regarding the Karabakh peace talks and respective the Madrid Principles.
"In order for my speech to be valid, I want to talk about myself first. I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [of Armenia] since 1992, a few years later I was appointed deputy [foreign] minister, and in 1998, I became [foreign] minister, and I was in that position for ten years. I have been involved in the settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem since the first day of coming to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At first, I was in a working group led by Gerard Libaridian. From 1995-1996, I was the main negotiator. To this day, the co-chairs of the [OSCE] Minsk Group have put six proposals for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue on the [negotiating] table. I’ve had a significant role in their development. The first was the proposal for cessation of hostilities, the second was the package proposal in 1997, the phased proposal in the same year. After that, when I was already a [foreign] minister, there was the ‘Common State’ proposal, after that the Key West, then the Madrid proposals. Not much has changed since the Madrid [proposals]; the Kazan [proposal] was a version of the Madrid [proposals]. I took an active part in all documents, I can say with quotation marks that I am one of its ‘authors,’" Oskanian said, adding that the initiative of the “Madrid document” was Armenia's.
"All the pro-Armenian provisions—the part of the referendum, the interim status, the corridor, the security issues—all of them were included in that document on our initiative.
“Nikol Pashinyan, criticizing the Madrid document, said that in those days, the Armenian authorities, accepting that document as a basis for negotiations, actually recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is a part of Azerbaijan, claiming that by doing so, we have declared the 1991 Nagorno-Karabakh independence referendum invalid.
“In fact, the Madrid document says exactly the opposite of what Nikol Pashinyan commented. Accepting that document as a basis for negotiations, Azerbaijanis, in fact, recognize that Nagorno-Karabakh is not part of Azerbaijan, and the people of Nagorno-Karabakh should decide their fate through a referendum.
“I really do not understand Nikol Pashinyan's logic, reasoning. We should ask him a question by the same logic. Why does he want to sign a peace treaty [with Azerbaijan] today, the basis of which will be the recognition of each other's territorial integrity? In fact, based on Nikol Pashinyan’s logic, if he enters into such negotiations that Azerbaijan should recognize the territorial integrity of Armenia, by his logic doesn't this mean that he recognizes Armenia as a part of Azerbaijan? Does Nikol Pashinyan thereby annul the 1991 independence referendum of Armenia, our borders?
“What we have done through negotiations, we have done in order to secure our rights internationally, for Azerbaijan to accept it, for the international community to accept it, for the roads to be opened, for no one to hinder us, for us to coexist normally with our neighbors. That was the goal.
“With that document, we succeeded in securing the right of self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Madrid document was one of the important achievements of our diplomacy," Oskanian said.
"In the years of its independence, Armenia had two important diplomatic achievements. The first was at the OSCE Budapest summit in 1994, when [then-]President Levon Ter-Petrosyan vetoed the ‘consensus minus one’ principle, despite great international pressure. And the second—the Madrid document presented by the mediators of the OSCE Minsk Group at the end of 2007 regarding the fundamental principles of the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, which took place at the end of the presidency of second President Robert Kocharyan.
“Today, the [incumbent] authorities are pulverizing that achievement of ours in order to justify themselves. Rest assured: if the right diplomacy is used correctly, that document has not lost its power yet. It is a fundamental document with which we can achieve great success," stated Oskanian.
