In a weekend statement to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the Foreign Ministry in Yerevan said “the issue was removed from the agenda of the normalization of interstate relations between the Armenia and Azerbaijan” because of a decree signed by Samvel Shahramanian, the Karabakh president, in September 2023 following an Azerbaijani military offensive that restored Baku’s control of the region.
The decree liquidated the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Shahramanian invalidated it in December 2023, saying that he had to sign it in order to enable Karabakh’s endangered population to safely flee to Armenia. He also argued that the decree, apparently demanded by Baku, was unconstitutional in the first place.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political allies accused the Karabakh leader of putting Armenia’s national security at serious risk after he declared the decree null and void. Pashinian has since repeatedly indicated that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry also claimed that Karabakh’s leadership refused to hold talks with Azerbaijani officials “in third countries” three months before the Azerbaijani offensive.
The talks organized by Western mediators were reportedly due to take place in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia in July 2023. Karabakh representatives said at the time that they were rescheduled for August 2023 but then cancelled by the Azerbaijani side. Pashinian publicly recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh earlier in 2023.
The Foreign Ministry claims reflecting Pashinian’s and his associates’ Karabakh-related rhetoric were strongly condemned by Armenia’s main opposition groups. Their leaders accused the ministry of distorting facts in a bid to absolve Pashinian of blame for the fall of Karabakh.
“Even [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev, in his remarks on the occupation of Artsakh and the final closure of the Artsakh issue, does not refer to the illegal document on the dissolution of Artsakh’s state bodies,” Ishkhan Saghatelian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) said in a Facebook post on Monday. “Therefore, the efforts of Aliyev's Armenian advocates are pathetic and futile.”
“The authorities do not manage to erase the traces of their own crimes even by distorting history and resorting to blatant falsifications,” Tigran Abrahamian, a senior lawmaker from the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, wrote for his part.
Edmon Marukian, another opposition leader who served as ambassador-at-large until March 2024, likewise called the Foreign Ministry statement a “disgrace.”
The ministry statement commented on Aliyev’s claim that up until January 2024 Yerevan sought to include “the fate of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” into a draft peace treaty discussed with Baku. He said that was the main sticking point in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
The text of the treaty, essentially finalized by the two sides on March 13, is understood to make no reference to Karabakh or its displaced population’s right to safely return home. Nevertheless, Aliyev has set a number of preconditions for its signing.