Armenia Acknowledges Azerbaijan's Territorial Integrity, Including Nagorno-Karabakh: MP from the ruling party

In Vancouver, Canada, the 30th annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA) took place. Maria Karapetyan, a member of Armenia's National Assembly delegation, delivered a speech at the OSCE PA's Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and Environment Committee meeting. This information is reported by the official website of the National Assembly of Armenia.

“Dear colleagues, I would like to start my speech by appreciating the work of the committee's rapporteur, Ms. Kugler. I would especially like to emphasize her point that when we talk about environmental issues, we must do so in a way that does not lead to depression or push citizens towards isolation due to their overwhelming complexity. We also need to generate sufficient optimism that we can seek solutions together. I believe this is a very important ideological approach to addressing these issues.

I would like to discuss the current situation in the South Caucasus. Armenia and Azerbaijan are engaged in peace negotiations. The goal that Armenia is pursuing in these peace talks is the signing of a peace treaty, whereby Armenia and Azerbaijan will mutually recognize each other's territorial integrity based on their internationally recognized borders.

Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, including Nagorno-Karabakh, with the understanding that the rights and security of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh must be discussed between Baku and representatives of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, with international presence for such dialogue.

However, for the past seven months, Azerbaijan has been blocking the Lachin corridor. This means that the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh are completely surrounded by Russian peacekeepers and the Azerbaijani army. Just a week ago, Azerbaijan placed concrete barriers on the road to the Lachin corridor. There are images of this online.

Currently, the flow of humanitarian assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh has also been halted. There are no gas, electricity, or supplies of food and medical aid. Patients in dire conditions who need inaccessible medical services in Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be evacuated. And there is no international presence to document and address all this.

This is a humanitarian crisis that has numerous other dimensions, including environmental and economic. To put the situation very simply, people in Nagorno-Karabakh have been unable to buy or sell anything for the past seven months; they are just waiting in their homes for food parcels to arrive. Lives there have come to a standstill and are under constant threat of aggression.

Despite the desperate nature of this situation, our position in Armenia is that we will not be provoked, nor will we abandon peace negotiations. We will continue to make sincere efforts and demonstrate political will to establish stability and peace in the South Caucasus. For this, we need consistent international support to deter Azerbaijan’s aggression.

After all the hardships that the peoples of the South Caucasus have endured over the last decades, there is a historic opportunity to establish peace between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan,” the MP stated.