Serj Sargsyan: There Will Be Great Problems if Tavush Villages are Handed Over

There will be great problems if the Tavush villages are handed over. This was stated by the third President of Armenia, Serj Sargsyan, during a conversation with reporters today.

“I think that before making such a decision, they did not know what was going to happen there, how Armenians and Azerbaijanis would live peacefully side by side at this stage, or on what grounds they believe that the gas pipeline entering our Republic should be left unharmed. At the beginning of the 90s, Armenia managed to bring an end to the explosions of these pipelines at a great cost, and if they think that everything is fine now, that Armenians and Azerbaijanis have reconciled... what can I say,” Sargsyan noted.

According to him, the issue lies in the grounds upon which Armenia is handing over these villages to Azerbaijan. “Any person who has gone through even a light course in diplomacy knows that the negotiating process is such that if the last point of the document is not agreed upon, then all previous points are also not agreed upon. Is this a demarcation process, or just meeting Azerbaijan's demands? Our chief negotiator tells us that if we don’t hand over the villages, then the Azerbaijanis will attack. Can we think that tomorrow or the day after, Azerbaijan may say, ‘if you don’t give us Syunik, we will attack,’ and take whatever they want; what kind of approach is this?” he said.

Responding to the statement of the National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan that Sargsyan knows where the borders of Armenia are, Sargsyan replied, “Who is Alen Simonyan? It is the last thing I need to comment on him.”

Regarding the Four-Day War and the question of why Azerbaijan attacked during that period, Sargsyan stated, “Because Azerbaijan had failed in diplomatic negotiations and tried to use the trick it used in 1994, when it offered a ceasefire under unacceptable conditions and one side initiated military operations, thus passing that phase. It is no coincidence that the leader of Azerbaijan stated in the fall of 2016 that he was being forced to recognize the independence of Artsakh behind closed doors. You remember, he reiterated the same thing twice after the 44-day war. His goal was to change the negotiating process.”