Would I Have Thought That One Day It Would Happen That Just As I Am Writing to Him from Prison, He Would Be Writing to Me from Prison? - Pashinyan

“You see what life is, I was in prison at that time, I wrote a letter to Saakashvili, and now he is writing to me from prison,” said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a press conference today, reflecting on the fact that back in 2009, he sent a letter to then-President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.

“Life is such a cruel and interesting thing. At that time, would it have crossed my mind that one day, just as I wrote to him from prison, he would write to me?” he stated.

A journalist read excerpts from that letter, in which Pashinyan urges Saakashvili to resign, noting, “The authorities should recognize their defeat in order to save the motherland from the label of defeat.”

“Is it possible for you to follow your call, your plea, that you addressed to the president of Georgia and step down?” the journalist asked.

In response, Pashinyan said, “I have already done that. Is my resignation in 2021, holding early parliamentary elections, and those elections being competitive, free, and fair such a small thing? You can ask a second question: very well, you resigned, you did what you said in the first part, so why did you participate in the elections? I have answered that dozens of times. At that time, the situation was such that some political forces were saying that we should transfer power to them. I said that I cannot transfer power to anyone because I do not own the power. That power is not a stray one that anyone can come and stand at the door and say, ‘Here you go, we are handing it over.’ The power has an owner, and by resigning, I return the power to the people, and I have stood before the people and said, ‘I am responsible for the defeat. I have said, my dear people, judge me; if you decide that I should be shot, I will stand silently against the wall of execution.’”

To the next question regarding how many more territories he is willing to concede to Azerbaijan and where the concessions would stop, the Prime Minister responded, “We are ready to cede not a single meter of the sovereign territory of Armenia. The positions I express, including those related to the delimitation process, are not because I think that the enemy is our country; let’s see what else we can concede. No, it is the direct opposite. You talk in axioms because for you it is an obvious truth that this is a treacherous, treasonous government that has come to hand over the lands. We turn your axioms into theorems, and we say what is happening and what should be done to stop that process. What should be done to halt the process of Armenia’s vulnerability and preserve the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Armenia? For that, it is necessary to base our positions on the issue of legitimacy.”