YEREVAN, APRIL 18, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that by adopting the Madrid Principles as the basis for resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in 2007, Armenia recognized Nagorno Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan made the remarks in parliament in response to a question from Hayastan (Armenia) faction MP Artur Khachatryan.

The lawmaker asked the PM to clarify why the 2022 report on the government’s program doesn’t mention the right to self-determination of the people of Nagorno Karabakh when the 2021-2026 government program noted it as one of the bases for conflict resolution.

Pashinyan said that in the negotiations legacy which he received in 2018 there is no “people of Nagorno Karabakh” wording, but rather an “entire population of Nagorno Karabakh” wording. “There words are highly important. Yes, the people is a constitutive entity under the Helsinki Act and all other acts. The population isn’t a constitutive entity, meaning it is not an entity to sovereignty. And third, if we say self-determination, from whom and where are we self-determining? For example, why aren’t we saying let Armenia self-determine? Because Armenia self-determined with the 1991 Alma Ata Declaration. From whom? From the Soviet Union, because it was part of the Soviet Union,” Pashinyan said.

PM Pashinyan explained that Armenia had a concept around this issue before 2007. The concept was the following: Nagorno Karabakh, like the others, is also self-determining from the Soviet Union, and there was a narrative that Nagorno Karabakh has never been part of Azerbaijan. In 2007 the Madrid Principles emerged, which stipulated that determining the status of Nagorno Karabakh and the entire process must be agreed with Azerbaijan. “Why must it be agreed with Azerbaijan if we don’t recognize Nagorno Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan? We have recognized Nagorno Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan with the Madrid Principles. I’ve said it is a problem when our negotiations content and public narrative don’t match. We’ve recognized but we didn’t say, and all wars and fighting were related to this,” he said.

PM Pashinyan added that an entity to self-determination is the one who wants to self-determine, but Nagorno Karabakh has been left out of the negotiations process in 1998. After this, the right to self-determination was simply left written in the Helsinki Final Act.

“And today I am saying, let’s decide, either we face this or let’s note what’s going to happen. I have information, I have the analysis, and I am saying, if we don’t face this reality, it’s not going to happen,” Pashinyan added.

MP Khachatryan argued that Pashinyan is equalizing self-determination with independence, whereas the Helsinki Final Act defines self-determination as something completely different. For example, the MP said, Armenia could self-determine and decide that it no longer needs a parliamentary republic and adopt theocracy. The MP argued that this is what the Helsinki Final Act is all about.

Pashinyan answered by saying that Azerbaijan has been saying the same thing during the entire negotiations process. “They were also saying that self-determination doesn’t mean that an independent state must exist. They were also saying that the entity to that self-determination aren’t the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh alone, the Azerbaijanis are also an entity, they were saying that the Azerbaijanis must also decide. That’s why I am speaking about the people-population wording. I’ve said back in 2019 that the negotiator of the Nagorno Karabakh issue must be a representative of the people of Nagorno Karabakh because the people of Nagorno Karabakh did not vote in our parliamentary elections, hence I don’t have a mandate. I’ve continuously and constantly expressed these positions,” Pashinyan said.

Asked about his vision of a future status for NK, Pashinyan said there can’t be any talk about a future status as long as the status it has so far isn’t stipulated in the logic of the narrative voiced by the MP.

Speaking about the MP’s observation regarding the ICJ ruling on the Kosovo issue, Pashinyan said that the ICJ had determined that self-determination doesn’t require permission from central authorities. “The Russian president also spoke about this in context of the events in Ukraine. He said that a region doesn’t have to apply to the [central authorities] for self-determination. There was a lot of discussion back then, but no one noticed that in 2007, with the Madrid Principles, we already accepted that we must do it together with them, it can’t be done unilaterally. That’s why I am saying that we’ve had a different concept before 2007,” the Prime Minister said.