Armenian PM: World community recognises Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that the world community recognises Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan made the remarks at the sitting of the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the 44-day war, Caliber.Az reports quoting Armenian media.

The Karabakh negotiation process and its content depended directly on the domestic political situation in Armenia, he said.

According to Pashinyan, this connection, although natural, played a negative role in the settlement process. The premier added that one of the key events is the OSCE Lisbon summit and the article "War or Peace? Time for Thoughtfulness", published by Armenia’s first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

"In essence, Ter-Petrosyan said that the status quo cannot last, that there is no need to engage in self-deception and that we have no allies in the Karabakh issue. He suggested concentrating on preserving Karabakh as Armenian, but did not say whether it was an independent status within Armenia or Azerbaijan," Pashinyan said.

According to him, the article of the first president provoked a strong reaction within the Armenian political elite, but there was no public dissatisfaction.

"Ter-Petrosian's article was another knot of confusion in the Karabakh process. And there are several reasons for that. First, one year after elections with dubious legitimacy, in which he participated under the slogan 'Victory, stability, progress,' Ter- Petrosyan was talking about peace, not victory," Pashinyan said.

He quoted Ter- Petrosyan’s article, in which the first president said that from his personal point of view, the best solution would have been not to participate in the 1996 presidential elections and to remain in the memory of generations as "the victor in the war," but he considered such a position "cowardly desertion”.

In conclusion, the premier recalled that three days and three months after the publication of the article, Ter- Petrosyan resigned.

According to Pashinyan, the experts did not state publicly that the four UN Security Council resolutions adopted in 1993, which recorded "the occupation of seven Azerbaijani districts by Armenian forces", demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from there. They considered unacceptable the use of force for the acquisition of territories, and Karabakh was referred to as "a region of the Republic of Azerbaijan. These documents, Pashinyan added, were not just "pieces of paper" and it would not be easy to forget them.

In this regard, he noted that although the OSCE Lisbon Summit in 1996 had no legal force, the position of the international community showed that it recognises the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and provides autonomy status for Karabakh within it.