In his address earlier this week to the Parliament of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan desperately attempted to justify his government’s capitulatory position on Artsakh. He expressed that the Armenian side needed to lower its expectations on the final status of Arstakh—yet another signal to his Turkish and Azerbaijani partners that Armenia is willing to accept a resolution that would grant Azerbaijan sovereignty over Artsakh.
Characteristically, in his speech to Parliament, Pashinyan tried once again to pin the blame of losing Artsakh on the former governments of Armenia, despite the fact that Artsakh was firmly liberated and under Armenian control for over two decades under Kocharyan’s and Sargsyan’s rule. He claimed that with or without war, Armenia would have had to give up Artsakh. However, the most surprising claim made by Pashinyan was that the international community, including countries friendly to Armenia, have all supposedly been demanding that Artsakh be returned to Azerbaijan for two decades.
Political commentators were quick to point out afterwards that in 2017, before Pashinyan came to power, Azerbaijan’s president Heydar Aliyev had expressed his frustration that the international community was forcing Azerbaijan to accept Artsakh’s independence.
In a conversation with 168.am, Murad Papazian, co-chair of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France and a member of the ARF Bureau confirmed that Nikol Pashinyan was lying.
“In particular, there is no such pressure from France, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair. With this, maybe Pashinyan is trying to justify what he did. I repeat, there is no pressure from France,” emphasized Papazian.
Papazian reminded that the President of France Emanuel Macron was surprised that Pashinyan never initiated contact with him during the latest Arstakh war. It was always Macron who was the initiator. Furthermore, Pashinyan never discussed the capitulation statement he would end up signing with the French president either, despite the fact that France is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, tasked to resolve the Artsakh conflict, and one of the most powerful countries in the world.
