Armenian opposition leaders have for years claimed that Pashinian’s failure to accept it paved the way for the disastrous 2020 war in Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s subsequent recapture of the region.
The proposed peace deal was based on the so-called Madrid Principles of a Karabakh settlement originally drafted by the U.S., Russian and French mediators in 2007. It upheld the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination while calling for their withdrawal from Azerbaijani districts around Karabakh occupied in the early 1990s. Karabakh’s internationally recognized status would be determined through a future referendum.
The 2019 plan is understood to have been the last version of the Madrid Principles. Pashinian denied its existence in December 2019.
Pashinian admitted receiving it in June 2019 during his government’s question-and-answer session in the Armenian parliament on Wednesday. He played down that fact, though.
“What was put on the table [at the time] was the result of negotiations that took place before me,” Pashinian said, answering a question from Agnesa Khamoyan of the opposition Hayastan alliance.
“You deceived Armenia’s citizens by declaring that there is no document on the negotiating table,” charged Khamoyan.
Pashinian denied lying to Armenians, saying that “there was always a document on the negotiating table.”
“Whether the document on the negotiating table was new or old, you hid it from Armenia’s citizens,” insisted the opposition lawmaker.
Pashinian did not clarify whether he rejected the 2019 plan and, if so, why.
The Armenian premier has repeatedly criticized the Madrid Principles since the 2020 war. In particular, he claimed in 2021 that the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group sought a “surrender of lands” to Azerbaijan and offered the Armenian side nothing in return.
The then Russian co-chair of the group, Igor Popov, bluntly denied that in written comments posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. He said Yerevan and Baku intensively negotiated on the proposed peace formula until Pashinian’s government “came up with new approaches” in 2018.
Popov argued that under the 2019 peace plan, Karabakh would have an internationally recognized interim status and retain control of two of the seven surrounding Azerbaijani districts pending the future referendum on its status.
In 2021, former President Serzh Sarkisian publicized the secretly recorded audio of a 2019 meeting during which Pashinian said he opposes the plan because it would not immediately formalize Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan. Pashinian can also be heard saying that he is ready to “play the fool or look a bit insane” in order to avoid such a settlement.
In December 2024, Pashinian doubled down on his strong criticism of the peace proposals jointly made by the United States, Russia and France, saying that they all were about “returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.”
Sarkisian and the two other former Armenian presidents -- Levon Ter-Petrosian Robert Kocharian -- responded by accusing Pashinian of continuing to distort the history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process. Ter-Petrosian also challenged the prime minister to publicize all peace plans put forward by the mediators from 1994 onwards along with Yerevan’s official responses to them.
Pashinian claimed on Wednesday that he is ready to do that but that his administration has still not managed to find those documents.
