Azerbaijan 'Categorically Rejects' Our Proposal for the Deoccupation of Hadrut Region: Pashinyan

The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, addressed the agreements made three times regarding the ceasefire during the 44-day war and their failure to be implemented. He stated, “There has been much speculation about what happened on October 19 and afterward. The following occurred: analyzing the situation and consulting with the President of Artsakh and the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, I decided that we must reach a ceasefire through certain, yes, also significant concessions. In this regard, I convened a meeting of the Security Council, which included representatives of parliamentary factions, including the opposition. The President of the Republic and the Catholicos participated in that meeting. On the same day, I also invited representatives of the extra-parliamentary opposition and informed them about the ongoing events.

After that, in accordance with the agreement, I called the President of Russia and stated that we wanted a ceasefire based on the return of Azerbaijani territories in the 5+2 format, a condition that has been presented to Armenia by mediators in various formats in the past. In the context of this conversation, we had a detailed discussion with the President of Russia, who said that we had reached a common understanding. This is an important note: we, along with the President of Russia, have the same formulation or common formulation regarding overcoming the situation. You know that there have been questions about the return of refugees, the issue of internally displaced Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and I said that we fundamentally have no objections regarding that issue and we will not have, if the matter is somehow interconnected with the process of clarifying the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. After that, the President of Russia had a conversation with the President of Azerbaijan, and as a result, it became clear that the Azerbaijani side categorically rejected our proposal for the deoccupation of the Hadrut region, our demand. Secondly, they demanded that the question of internally displaced persons, including from Shushi, should not be linked to the clarification of the status. Additionally, this is a new detail that I had not mentioned before: there has been a hint that rather than the return of territories being based on the 5+2 principle, it should rather involve 7 territories,” Pashinyan elaborated.

According to the Prime Minister, Azerbaijan has not accepted the agenda for the clarification of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh both before and during the war. “Azerbaijan has, from a certain point, refused to discuss the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as a priority agenda item, and this has been the main reason for both the April 2016 and the 2020 44-day war,” he said.