I carefully follow the opinions of the National Assembly of Artsakh, I value them, I treat them with respect, but what I said is something else. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told this reporters in the National Assembly of Armenia Thursday, referring to the statement by the five factions of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) National Assembly, where they considered unacceptable Pashinyan's statements that Armenia fully recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and that they separate the matter of ensuring the safety of the people of Artsakh from the right to self-determination within the official framework of Armenia.
When asked if he was misunderstood in Artsakh, Pashinyan responded: "Usually they misunderstand, and it is not ruled out that they misunderstood this time, too. But in my opinion, by and large, there is nothing to misunderstand because my assessments are very clear. I want to draw attention to the following as to which counterargument was voiced in the field of arguments. I say let's put the assessments aside for a moment because what you're saying, there's nothing new in the assessments; starting [from the fact] that it is treason, starting [from the fact] that it is not treason. Let's dig into the content and see what that content means."
And to Armenian News-NEWS.am's question as to whether he agreed that territorial integrity implies that Artsakh will be part of Azerbaijan, the Armenian premier answered: "In my report, I clearly recorded the following that the 2007 record—the ‘self-determination’ wording of the Madrid Principles—is given in such a way that the right to self-determination, and I also said during the previous question-and-answer session [that] under the Madrid principles, Armenia recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan; that's the problem.
"And I was saying that we, not facing this reality, created the desired reality in parallel, which had nothing to do with the international and geopolitical reality. We have to face this situation. I say to our dear oppositionists: criticize me for this. Why don't you criticize for this? Because you also made the same mistake."
