YEREVAN, JUNE 27, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that he has information that Robert Kocharyan considered swapping the Armenian town of Meghri with Nagorno Karabakh during his presidency in negotiations with then-Azerbaijani leader Heydar Aliyev.

Pashinyan told lawmakers at the parliament select committee on the 2020 war that Vagharshak Harutyunyan, the Armenian Ambassador to Russia, told him that the option was discussed during a Kocharyan-Aliyev meeting in 1999 in Sadarak. Harutyunyan, who was Minister of Defense of Armenia at that time, was present at the meeting, according to his account.

“There were other people present at the discussion, particularly Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan,” Pashinyan said when asked on the Kocharyan-Aliyev meeting. “[Harutyunyan] has publicly said that the Meghri option was discussed at his presence between Robert Kocharyan and Heydar Aliyev in July of 1999 in Sadarak. Harutyunyan has also said that Kocharyan told him that the Meghri option was a good option for resolving the Karabakh conflict. According to him, the Meghri option back then was the following: The former NKAO territory was to be united with Armenia, as well as Lachin, as a corridor between Armenia and Artsakh, and in exchange Armenia were to surrender the Meghri region to Azerbaijan with the 1988 borders, for Azerbaijan to obtain a land connection with Nakhchivan. But by doing so Armenia would lose its land connection with Iran,” Pashinyan said.

Pashinyan added that there are testimonies that this option was indeed discussed.

He also cited a newspaper article from 2000 about then-FM Vartan Oskanian, who allegedly spoke about the Meghri option and said that it also envisaged a sovereign road for Armenia to retain land connection with Iran.