A contradiction between Foreign Ministry’s former and Prime Minister’s current statements: Yerevan has changed its position

During a parliamentary briefing on November 19, Artsvik Minasyan, an MP from the Hayastan Alliance, stated that the statements of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the boundary delimitation and demarcation process and the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict contradict each other.

In particular, Artsvik Minasyan noted that months ago, when referring to delimitation and demarcation, the Foreign Ministry officially stated that the issue of delimitation and demarcation of the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan could not be discussed in isolation from the issue of realization of the Artsakh people’s right to self-determination. “During the question-and-answer session in the National Assembly the other day, Nikol Pashinyan was saying the diametrically opposite thing, that these are three different issues,” Minasyan said.

The Fact Investigation Platform decided to find out to what extent Minasyan’s statements correspond to reality and how Armenia’s position on the demarcation of the border with Azerbaijan and the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict has changed.

On May 21, 2021, the former Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anna Naghdalyan stated during a question-and-answer session with journalists: “The delimitation and further demarcation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan should be part of the process of comprehensive peace settlement, within the framework of which the issues of de-occupation of the territories of the Artsakh Republic and determination of the final legal status of Nagorno Karabakh under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group should be addressed.”

By the way, Ara Ayvazyan was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time, resigning about a week after the aforementioned statement (May 27). And on May 31, Anna Naghdalyan left the post of Foreign Ministry Spokesperson.

During a question-and-answer session with the government in the National Assembly on November 18, in response to a question from Maria Karapetyan (a member of the Civil Contract faction) on the Russia-Armenia-Azerbaijan trilateral work on unblocking communications, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did state that delimitation and demarcation issues are not interconnected with the Nagorno Karabakh issue and they work in different formats to address those issues.

“We have clearly stated that for us the three different issues are not interconnected, in particular, the unblocking of regional communications, the delimitation and demarcation of borders and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. These are different issues, and the substance and formulas for discussing these issues are different, no matter how much we understand that they are related in terms of context,” Pashinyan said.

It should also be noted that the Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan made such a statement earlier. In an interview with the Public Television on August 20, Grigoryan said that “delimitation and demarcation work will take place without the Karabakh issue.”

“There is a special format for the Karabakh issue and it is the only format, the format of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, beyond which the Karabakh issue has not been discussed,” he said.

Thus, the statement of Artsvik Minasyan, a member of the “Hayastan” faction, that the Prime Minister expressed a completely contradictory position on the delimitation and demarcation process and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is true, and official Yerevan’s position on the issue has changed dramatically.

Nane Manasyan