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The domestic political debate regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict negotiation process has once again intensified against the backdrop of a recent press conference by the second President of the Republic of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, and an interview given to Radiolur by the Ambassador of France to the Republic of Armenia.
The Fact Investigation Platform has brought together controversial and important political statements made on the matter previously.
The Alma-Ata Declaration and reservations
In the interview with Radiolur, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to Armenia Olivier Decottignies noted that “Armenia has also accepted, recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan since the adoption of the Alma-Ata Declaration, because Nagorno-Karabakh was a region of Soviet Azerbaijan.“
“Therefore, those who claim that Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan in 2022 in Prague are lying, because Nagorno-Karabakh has been recognized by Armenia as part of Azerbaijan since the Alma-Ata Declaration. By the way, Prague only makes a reference to, reminds of the Alma-Ata Declaration. And today the question is how to achieve peace – a fair, sustainable, strong peace – in order to eliminate the threats hanging over Armenia,” the ambassador said.
Note that in October 2022, the quadrilateral statement adopted in Prague by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, France, and then President of the European Council Charles Michel referred to this declaration for the first time. In particular, Armenia and Azerbaijan reiterated their commitment to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, with which both parties recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
The statement by the ambassador intensified the old debate between political forces about the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiation process. In particular, the representative of the Armenian National Congress Levon Zurabyan told Azatutyun that Decottignies was wrong in urging him to familiarize himself with the reservation to the Declaration.
It is known that on February 18, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia ratified with reservations the Agreement Establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, signed in Minsk on December 8, 1991 by Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
With one of the reservations, the Council proposed to rewrite Article 5 of the Agreement, by editing the paragraph “The High Contracting Parties acknowledge and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the invoilability of existing borders within the Commonwealth” and reformulating it as “The High Contracting Parties acknowledge and respect the right of nations to self-determination, each other’s territorial integrity and the invoilability of existing borders within the Commonwealth”.
“The reservations have no force; they were not sent to the depositary”
During a question-and-answer session with the government in the National Assembly on February 7, 2024, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that “the reservations made by the Armenian Parliament when signing the Alma-Ata Declaration were not transferred to the depositary.”
“According to international and domestic law, when a country makes a reservation under the Vienna Convention, that reservation must also be notified to the depositary. We have studied this issue for a long time and have recorded that Armenia did not notify the depositary about this. Therefore, from the perspective of international legal relations, these reservations have no legal force,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan’s statement was also confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, informing the press that the Republic of Armenia signed the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991 without reservations.
“The Supreme Council formulated reservations for which there is no information available regarding notification to other contracting states. It follows from the above that the procedure and conditions for formulating reservations, as defined in Article 23, paragraph 1, of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of May 23, 1969, have not been secured,” the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reads.
It is noteworthy that the former authorities of Armenia, including the first president and his teammates, have never denied this claim made by the government.
How the authorities countered the Armenian National Congress
MP from the Civil Contract Party faction of the National Assembly Maria Karapetyan countered Zurabyan on her Facebook page, noting that the Declaration recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan not only because the Supreme Council’s reservations did not receive legal force due to not having been sent to the CIS depositary. According to Karapetyan, the reservations are about Nagorno-Karabakh’s self-determination within Azerbaijan, and not about secession or independence.
“Did these additions remove the principle of territorial integrity enshrined in the same text? Didn’t this remain a document that refers to both the right to self-determination and territorial integrity? And wasn’t it Levon Ter-Petrosyan who said during a rally in 2012: “When the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination are put side by side, it means that Karabakh’s self-determination shall be resolved within the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, that is, autonomy within Azerbaijan. Let no one be deceived,” the MP wrote.
The MP also published on her Facebook page a video of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s interview with Soviet Television (Советское телевидение) on the plane on his way back from Alma-Ata, in which in response to a journalist’s question about how the ratification of the declaration would proceed in the Armenian parliament, the first president noted that there would be observations regarding the status of Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomy.
“…so that we can obtain solid guarantees for the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous entity,” says the first president.
Thus, the official information that Armenia’s reservations to the Alma-Ata Declaration were not sent to the CIS depositary has never been denied. At the same time, the content of the reservations enshrines both the right of nations to self-determination and the right to territorial integrity and inviolability of borders.
“Who recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan?”
After the 44-day war (the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War) of 2020, the current government has made the claim that the previous authorities accepted throughout the entire negotiation process that Nagorno-Karabakh would self-determine within Azerbaijan, effectively recognizing it as part of the latter’s territorial integrity. This claim was consolidated after the quadrilateral statement in Prague. The government insisted that by referring to the Alma-Ata Declaration, the Republic of Armenia did not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan for the first time ever, but, rather, reaffirmed the position of all previous governments.
In particular, during a press conference on May 22, 2023, Pashinyan referred to the recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, noting that “regardless of what the current government of Armenia says or does, all governments of the Republic of Armenia have recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.”
It is noteworthy that weeks after Pashinyan’s statement, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell noted in the European Parliament that “Armenia has recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as an integral part of Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan is the first Armenian leader to make such a statement, and the EU hopes that official Baku will receive that message.”
At that time too, Levon Zurabyan, representative of the Armenian National Congress, countered Pashinyan, noting that the only leader of Armenia who officially agreed to a solution to the conflict that recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan was the second president, Robert Kocharyan, who accepted the 1998 “Common State” plan without reservations.
“However, for the sake of truth, it must be recorded that the plan to which Robert Kocharyan gave his consent cannot even be compared with the destructive plan for Nagorno-Karabakh to which Nikol Pashinyan agreed,” Zurabyan said.
Ter-Petrosyan noted in an interview given in 2012 that both the 2nd President Robert Kocharyan and the 3rd President Serzh Sargsyan accepted the option of resolving the issue of self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, reaching an agreement in 2007 and subsequently negotiating within the framework of the Madrid Principles for resolving the conflict.
Thus, Ter-Petrosyan explained that the combination of the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination of nations, adopted from the very beginning of the conflict, means self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
He specifically said:
“What are these Madrid Principles? Has anyone tried to make sense of them? Listen, it is the same Lisbon plan. They talk as if it is their achievement, as if the principle of self-determination was enshrined in those principles for the first time. No, that is not the case. That principle was also there in Lisbon, which I vetoed. How can these two principles be combined? If it is territorial integrity and you put the right to self-determination on its side, that means self-determination within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Let them not deceive the people.”
Note that during the 1996 OSCE Lisbon Summit, it was planned to adopt a declaration in which a separate part was to be dedicated to Nagorno-Karabakh. According to it, the resolution of the conflict was based on three principles: respect for the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan, ensuring the highest degree of self-government of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan, and guaranteeing the security of Nagorno-Karabakh and its population. Armenia exercised its right of veto, and that part was left out of the final text of the declaration.
In fact, according to Ter-Petrosyan, at least the previous two governments of Armenia agreed to discuss the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, which implies recognizing it as part of Azerbaijan.
It is noteworthy that the words of the first president were also reproduced by the MP from Civil Contract Party Maria Karapetyan in an interview with Azatutyun on February 25:
“Territorial integrity, along with the self-determination of nations, has been one of the principles. So, what solution option is excluded when the principle of self-determination is put next to territorial integrity, you have to answer this question… (NKR-Ed.) independence, secession.”
Karapetyan claimed that Armenia “re-recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan because Armenia had already done so once by joining the Alma-Ata Declaration.”
Thus, Ter-Petrosyan has consistently stated that the Madrid Principles implied a status for Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan. The same position has been expressed by various officials from the Civil Contract Party.
“Who left Nagorno-Karabakh out of the negotiation process?”
During a press conference on February 17, in response to a journalist’s question about leaving Nagorno-Karabakh out of the negotiation process during his presidency, Robert Kocharyan insisted that “NKR was never left out of the negotiation process.” Moreover, he emphasized that the claim about leaving Nagorno-Karabakh out of the negotiations is false.
Meanwhile, during another remote debate with Ter-Petrosyan in the run-up to the 2021 parliamentary elections, Kocharyan himself stated that “NKR was left out of the negotiation process,” but not during his term, but during the first president’s term.
Member of the Armenian National Congress Levon Zurabyan responded to this statement, emphasizing that the trilateral negotiation format was maintained during the first years of Kocharyan’s tenure.
“In November 1998, a document called the Common State Peace Plan was presented to the three sides: Yerevan, Baku, and Stepanakert. If he claims that there was no trilateral format at that time, what explanation will he give for this fact? He himself does not have that explanation,” Zurabyan noted.
Kocharyan and his office attributed this act to Ter-Petrosyan previously as well. (1, 2, 3).
It is noteworthy that in an interview given to Public Television before the 2003 presidential elections, the second president explained why he decided to speak also on behalf of Nagorno-Karabakh. According to Kocharyan, this was done so that the international community would deal with “the approach of the united Armenian people.”
“When Armenia clearly stated that it is not indifferent, that it has its own approach, is ready to take on the burden related to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, me too, we represented the two Armenian entities in the negotiation process, and the situation completely changed. They were no longer dealing with an unrecognized state and a wavering Armenia, but with the united approach of the Armenian people – Armenia, Karabakh, and the Diaspora,” he said.
In fact, Kocharyan’s statement in 2003 proves that he was the one who left Nagorno-Karabakh out of the negotiation process, and not Ter-Petrosyan, as he claimed in later years.
Let us recall that years ago, the Fact Investigation Platform brought together a number of events from the negotiation process, which also indicate that Artsakh was left out of the process during Kocharyan’s tenure.
Nane Manasyan
