YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan condemned on Thursday Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s latest statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a threat to Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
He said Armenia will use its military alliance with Russia to neutralize such threats.
Speaking on Wednesday, Aliyev complained that Yerevan is reluctant to sign a “peace treaty” with Baku eight months after a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the war in Karabakh. He said such a treaty must commit the two sides to recognizing each other’s territorial integrity.
This would presumably mean a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
“The Armenians must think carefully about that because it could be too late for them in the future,” said Aliyev.
In that context, he again referred to much of Armenia’s territory, including the capital Yerevan, as “historical Azerbaijani lands” and said Azerbaijanis will eventually “return to their ancestral lands.”
Pashinyan hit back at Aliyev as he opened a weekly meeting of his cabinet in Yerevan. He said Baku is hampering regional peace and stability with “statements threatening Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“Armenia will defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity by all possible and impossible means, including the mechanisms of the joint Russian-Armenian military contingent and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, something about which we have been holding consultations with our partners,” he said.
Pashinyan also pointed to Aliyev’s repeated threats to forcibly open a “corridor” connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Armenia’s Syunik province. He said they run counter to the terms of the truce agreement brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 9.
The agreement commits Yerevan to opening rail and road links between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan. Armenia should be able, for its part, to use Azerbaijani territory as a transit route for cargo shipments to and from Russia and Iran.
At a January meeting in Moscow, Putin, Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to set up a trilateral working group tasked with working out practical modalities of reopening the transport links. The group co-headed by deputy prime ministers of the three states held several meetings in the following months.
Pashinyan claimed that Aliyev’s threats are aimed at disrupting the group’s “quite constructive and productive activities.”
Citing statements made by the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group, he further disputed Aliyev’s fresh claim that Azerbaijani “unilaterally” resolved the Karabakh conflict with its victory in the six-week war. He made clear that Yerevan will continue to pursue “the realization of the Karabakh people’s right to self-determination.”
What a big lie. Pashinyan sold Armenia lands to the enemy.
To Dr. Hermon Mihranian, I am surprised somebody like you that calls himself a doctor, can be so illogical and blame Pashinyan for what happened. Wakeup and smell the reality.
All four Armenian presidents and prime minters are collectively responsible for what happened and the last one in particular. They had a quarter century to modernize and strengthen the army but instead did nothing, to say the least, not to mention the widespread corruptions, and relied on empty declarations made by Russia, the US and France that this conflict can only be resolved through negotiations and peaceful means while the deceptive enemy publically embraced their declarations but privately it prepared for war. The so-called 4-day war of April 2016 in which the enemy started using UAVs (drones) should have been a wake-up call for the Armenian leaders but to no avail.
This current government under Pashinyan, an inexperienced journalist turned prime minister with no qualifications whatsoever to lead a country in a state of war for the last 30 years, had several years to invest in UAVs and modern technology but instead spent hundreds of millions buying a few Russian jets without the ammunition to fire! They all have their own share of guilt in this without a doubt but Pashinyan should never have been allowed to lead the country. He does not have what it takes to lead a country at war!
This chicken-hawk Ilham Aliyev, who at his ripe military age was hiding in Moscow during the 1990 Liberation War, needs a major reality check real bad. Intoxicated with Turkish invasion of Artsakh he has now turned, in his imagination, into a pseudo-Turkish Napoleon. Detached from reality he now lives in a bubble that soon is going to burst in his mutt face. This is the same racist idiot who could not do a damn thing nearly for the last two decades since he took power in 2003 and with pockets full of petrodollars and he now, with terrorist Turkey on his side, thinks he can threaten the Armenians and do as he pleases. Aliyev, the chicken-hawk of artificial Azerbaijan, you are the same coward today as you were thirty years ago and one day soon you, just like your late KGB father, are going to kneel down in front of your Armenian captors begging for your life. But it is going to be too late by then. You are going to be made to eat your own words one by one before you meet your destiny in Stepanakert!