Response to Pashinyan's Statement from Levon Ter-Petrosyan's Spokesperson

Arman Musinyan, the spokesperson for the first President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, wrote on his Facebook page:

“Regarding Nikol Pashinyan’s statement today, he made the following statement: ‘Levon Ter-Petrosyan formulates that this was the situation regarding the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, but in the end, he does not formulate what his vision was for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, what was it today? It must be clearly stated that his vision regarding the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was that we should give Nagorno-Karabakh entirely to Azerbaijan and consider the topic closed.”

In response to questions from journalists regarding this matter, I would like to state on behalf of the First President:

This post by Pashinyan proves that he indeed understands nothing about politics. He does not understand the direct, straightforward words of neither his opponents nor even his allies, such as Russia. Moreover, he does not even understand what he is accusing the First President of, saying that the latter wants to hand over Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan—something that he has already “gloriously” accomplished by handing Nagorno-Karabakh over to Azerbaijan entirely.

In other words, if Robert Kocharyan had removed Artsakh from the status of an equal party in the Nagorno-Karabakh resolution process, then Pashinyan has stripped Armenia of that same status. Armenia no longer has a decisive voice on this issue.

However, this does not mean that we should wash our hands of the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. The only viable step for Armenia is to meet the humanitarian needs of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, from which it follows that we must continue the economic and financial support provided to Nagorno-Karabakh for decades and prevent the threat of emigration from Nagorno-Karabakh by promptly resolving the issue of the tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians who are still sheltered in Armenia as a result of the war, returning them to their native places.”