Every subsequent negotiation document became better for Azerbaijan, says Rubinyan

I am surprised by the imagination of our opposition colleagues, who invent some meaningless arguments for every new fact presented. There was no need to publish the negotiation documents to prove that the negotiation process was at a deadlock. This was stated by Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan during a conversation with journalists in parliament regarding the peace negotiation process for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He recalled that Serzh Sargsyan, on April 17, 2018, upon being elected Prime Minister in this hall, answered a question from a member of the Republican faction, stating that the negotiation process was stalled and did not inspire hope.

Regarding why the 44-day war took place, Rubinyan noted that it occurred for two reasons. “The first reason is that by 1998, the ratio of military budgets between Armenia and Azerbaijan was 1 to 1.1, meaning they were almost equal. By 2008, when Robert Kocharian was finishing his presidency, this ratio had increased to 1 to 5.3, indicating that Azerbaijan's military budget exceeded Armenia's military budget by five times. Under Serzh Sargsyan, this ratio increased even further, and we inherited a significant difference in military budgets, which has decreased during our time,” Rubinyan recalled.

According to him, during this period, the personal budget of Robert Kocharian's family increased, and the budget of Serzh Sargsyan's son-in-law grew rapidly. “On one hand, we had a difference in military budgets favoring Azerbaijan; on the other hand, we saw the growth of the personal budgets of Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharian. On the one hand, there was a continuous deterioration of negotiation documents for the Armenian side, and on the other hand, Azerbaijan did not say 'yes' to those deteriorating documents, because every subsequent document became better for Azerbaijan,” stated the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly.

Rubinyan reminded that the last document to which either side said 'yes' was the 2011 Kazan document, to which Armenia, represented by Serzh Sargsyan, said 'yes', while Azerbaijan, represented by Ilham Aliyev, said 'no'. “Since then, there has not been any document that Azerbaijan said 'yes' to and Armenia said 'no' to,” emphasized Ruben Rubinyan.