Prime Minister's Office Reveals Details from Secret Nagorno-Karabakh Negotiations

The Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia has revealed certain details regarding the proposals made by the Minsk Group in 2016 concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, in response to a query from "Azatutyun". However, the actual documents referred to by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan have not been made public by the government.

"Azatutyun" had approached the government after Pashinyan asserted during a press conference at the end of last year that none of the three packages of proposals submitted in 2016 mentioned the interim status of Artsakh. The press outlet reminded that during a press conference in January 2020, the Prime Minister had stated otherwise, specifically saying that according to the negotiating legacy left by Serzh Sargsyan, Nagorno-Karabakh would be granted a temporary status, and thus, sought clarification.

The Prime Minister's office responded, stating that the topic of an interim or temporary status for Nagorno-Karabakh has always been present in the negotiation process since 2007, following the circulation of the well-known Madrid principles. However, in the three proposals submitted in 2016 before the April war, in July, and August, the statement "Nagorno-Karabakh receives interim/temporary status" was absent.

At the same time, the government noted that although the wording itself was not present, certain attributes of an interim/temporary status existed that would need to be confirmed by the UN Security Council, which should become the recognized status of Nagorno-Karabakh until the final status was clarified. The Prime Minister's office once again emphasized that this was regarded by Nikol Pashinyan as a disaster because the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh would come under the jurisdiction of the UN Security Council, which could not help but base its decisions on previously established resolutions regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The government qualifies this assertion as obvious and indisputable, citing the last of the four resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in 1993, which not only includes the term "the mountainous Karabakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan" but also affirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and other countries in the region. According to the Prime Minister's office, this implies that "the Security Council would inevitably determine that until the final status is clarified, Nagorno-Karabakh receives a recognized status within Azerbaijan."

However, neither the government's official explanation nor Pashinyan himself specifies why the UN Security Council would inevitably define that Nagorno-Karabakh would receive a status within Azerbaijan, given that in 2007, the three permanent members of the council—the USA, Russia, and France—acting as co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, had presented the Madrid principles at the negotiating table, placing territorial integrity alongside the principle of self-determination on the same plane.

Moreover, when in 2008 Baku introduced a specific resolution to the UN General Assembly, which only mentioned Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, the USA, Russia, and France voted against it. Speaking on behalf of the OSCE Minsk Group, the American representative stated that the document was unacceptable because it "selectively presented the principles put forth by the mediators without taking into account the co-chairs' proposal in its balanced entirety." The resolution put forth by Azerbaijan was also not supported by the fourth of the five permanent members of the Security Council—Great Britain, which preferred to abstain.

The Prime Minister's office also argues that the final status of Artsakh, inherited by Pashinyan, should be determined through a nationwide referendum conducted across all of Azerbaijan's territory. As justification, the government presented a portion of the 2016 negotiating documents, stating that the issue should be resolved "through a nationwide referendum that expresses the free will of the entire population of Karabakh."

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