During the Parliament-Government question-and-answer session, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We must fundamentally reflect on the concept with which the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was pursued during the years of our independence. There we have two parts: before the Madrid Principles, and after that. Before the Madrid Principles, the position of the Armenian parties was that Nagorno-Karabakh was never part of independent Azerbaijan and exercised its right to self-determination in the context of the collapse of the USSR. Just as other subjects of the USSR, exercising the right to self-determination received independence, so did Nagorno-Karabakh received that right. Consequently, Nagorno-Karabakh became independent from the USSR.
In 2007, during the period of transformation or transfer of power (in Armenia) when Serzh Sargsyan was the Prime Minister and Robert Kocharyan was holding the office of the President of the Republic of Armenia, the Madrid Principles emerged at that time, where the principles of territorial integrity and the right to self-determination were being emphasized. It was recorded that the status of Nagorno-Karabakh should be adjusted by some mechanism, and that mechanism should, in fact, be agreed upon by Azerbaijan as well.
A very serious, conceptual change has taken place here. If before the Madrid Principles, the position of the Armenian parties was that Karabakh was never part of Azerbaijan and is not now either, therefore, there may not be a need to agree on the future status because Nagorno-Karabakh has already self-determined, the Madrid Principles record that an agreement should be reached with Azerbaijan regarding the status of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan said.
According to him, a question arises here that if we do not consider Nagorno-Karabakh to be a part of Azerbaijan, why the issue of its status should be agreed with Azerbaijan.
According to Pashinyan, Armenia recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan according to the Madrid principles.
“It is our mistake that we should have stopped then and said: people, this is the situation, let's decide what to do. We have thought that it is possible to get out of this trap in some ways, or at least it is our duty to do our best to get out of that trap. But since the trap was internationally agreed, we could not do it,” said Pashinyan.
