YEREVAN. – The main objective of setting up a parliamentary investigative committee for the April 2016 war is to ensure that there can be no similar situation. The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, on Wednesday told about this to reporters.

“If anyone has allowed for a punishable act, naturally, he will be punished,” he added, in particular.

To the remark that he had stated that there were intelligence data and they knew that there will be an attack—by Azerbaijan and against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in April 2016—and asked whether these facts would also be examined by the aforesaid committee, Pashinyan responded as follows: “All facts should be revealed at the [parliamentary] investigative committee. (...). The objective of the investigative committee is not to catch and punish someone, but to analyze the situation. The most important task for me today is the following: to record the situation and to ensure that the same situation can’t be repeated.”

Pashinyan, however, stressed that those who have permitted a punishable act will be punished.

“And the objective of the [parliamentary] investigative committee is to ensure and make sure—by yet another leverage of civilian oversight over the Armed Forces—of what happened during the April [war], and to make sure that it can’t be repeated.”