Aliyev Pulled Out a Paper from His Pocket, Everyone Was Shocked: Serge Sargsyan Shares Details of the Negotiation Process

Former Armenian President Serge Sargsyan has given an interview to the prestigious British publication, "The Independent." The full text of the interview has been published by the office of the third president, which we present below.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk. Overall, how do you assess the war? It feels like the war has turned into a process aimed at seeing which of the fighting sides will exhaust itself first, but at the same time there is a sense that the Armenian army is losing. What do you think?

The President of Azerbaijan has continually promised his people that his army can quickly capture Nagorno-Karabakh if they so wish. Now they are using all the weapons available in their arsenal, including drones and mercenaries sent by Turkey, yet within three weeks they have only managed to make significant gains in one direction, and this does not mean the end of the war. The Armenian army is a combat-ready force, with thousands of professionals dedicated to their work, generals and officers with experience from two wars, tens of thousands of brave soldiers, and sufficient arms for defensive warfare. But unfortunately, many were killed, inflicting heavy losses on the Azerbaijani armed forces and mercenaries. Strategically, this war is madness, and the civilian population is paying the price for Aliyev's insane dream.

For 25 years, you managed to contain the conflict, but since your successor came to power, there have already been two major conflicts. Do you think your successor is handling the issue differently than you?

First, I need to say that I do not consider that two major clashes have occurred; the events of July can be regarded as a border incident and, in my opinion, could have been resolved differently. But I agree with you that my successor did not follow the path along which we had been successfully moving for a long time and decided, as he expressed himself, to start negotiations from his own point.

I can say that this conflict has never been a frozen conflict, even if we managed to guarantee the security of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. On a small scale, Azerbaijan has continued to attack us all these years. True peace is only possible through negotiations. It could have been achieved, for example, in Kazan.

Years of negotiations, which have seen both progress and setbacks, led to an agreement on a package solution between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in June 2011. The presidents of the three co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group expressed satisfaction regarding the significant progress made. Russia made a public statement, and the President of Azerbaijan and I were invited to Kazan to confirm the agreement reached. When we were all under the same roof, Aliyev pulled out a paper from his pocket, with more than ten substantial changes. All these provisions had been discussed among the parties for months during negotiations and had been thoroughly clarified or removed from the properly formulated document. Everyone was shocked, and despite the disappointment of the mediators, Aliyev declared that he would not give his consent to the document.

I do not agree that the negotiation path for resolving the issue was exhausted in Kazan. Yes, in 2016, Aliyev broke the ceasefire and attacked Nagorno-Karabakh. We defended ourselves bravely, did not lose any settlements, and Aliyev was forced to reaffirm the ceasefire agreed upon in 1994 by the authorities of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Subsequently, weeks after the military actions, in Vienna and St. Petersburg, the co-chairs of the Minsk Group decided to respect the indefinitely agreed trilateral ceasefire agreements of 1994-1995, establish mechanisms for investigating incidents, and expand the capabilities of the personal representative of the OSCE chairperson. And although Aliyev was reluctant to agree to this, we continued negotiations through the mediators, the co-chairs of the Minsk Group.