Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed last December that all of the peace plans drafted by the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group from 1994 onwards were about “returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.” Ter-Petrosian responded by challenging him to make them public along with Yerevan’s official responses to them. Pashinian said that he is ready to do that but that his administration has still not managed to find those documents.
His office told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in January that he instructed the Armenian Foreign Ministry to “inventory the negotiation papers available at the ministry” for their possible publication. It said the prime minister will decide whether or not to publicize them after assessing the matter “from the standpoint of Armenia's national security interests.”
The Foreign Ministry declined to clarify on Monday whether it has finally put together the peace plans. It said only that the “work” assigned to it by Pashinian is still not over.
Ruben Rubinian, an Armenian parliament vice-speaker and senior member of the ruling Civil Contract party, assured reporters that the authorities in Yerevan have no “political inhibitions” on that score. But he would not say why they have still not disclosed the full text of the Minsk Group documents.
Ter-Petrosian renewed his calls last week following Pashinian’s furious reaction to his September 22 statement blaming the premier for the six-week war and accusing him of “sacrificing” 5,000 Armenian lives. Other opposition leaders have their voice to the calls.
Most of the peace plans were based on so-called Madrid Principles originally put forward by the U.S., Russian and French mediators in 2007. This draft framework agreement, repeatedly modified in the following decade, upheld the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination while calling for their withdrawal from seven Azerbaijani districts around Karabakh fully or partly occupied in the early 1990s. Karabakh’s internationally recognized status would be determined through a future referendum.
The Minsk Group co-chairs presented the conflicting sides with an updated version of the proposed peace deal in 2019, one year after Pashinian came to power. The premier reluctantly acknowledged this fact in February after repeated denials.
Pashinian also admitted late last month that he rejected that plan. He claimed that its implementation would have led to the “loss of Armenia’s independence and statehood.”
Armenian opposition leaders maintain that Pashinian’s failure to accept the plan paved the way for the disastrous 2020 war and Azerbaijan’s subsequent recapture of Karabakh. Some of them seized upon his admission to accuse him of deliberately provoking the six-week war that left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead.
Speaking to Factor.am earlier this month, Arman Yeghoyan, another senior pro-government lawmaker, said that the 2019 plan did not meet “the expectations of our people at the time.” He said it only called for the Armenian withdrawal from five of the seven Azerbaijani districts and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh.
“There would be Russian guarantees, not international guarantees, [for Karabakh,]” added Yeghoyan.
But Levon Zurabian, the deputy chairman of the Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress party, insisted that the plan rejected by Pashinian was highly favorable for the Armenian side.
“Had it been implemented, we would … have returned only five districts to Azerbaijan and a full-fledged peace would have been established with peacekeeping forces and so on,” said Zurabian. “The question of determining Nagorno-Karabakh’s status was tied to the Kelbajar and Lachin districts. If Azerbaijan was to get Kelbajar back it, would have to make major concessions on the question of Karabakh’s status.”
Igor Popov, a former Russian mediator, made a similar point in 2021 in response to Pashinian’s criticism of the Minsk Group proposals. Popov argued that under the 2019 plan, Karabakh would have an internationally recognized interim status and retain control of Lachin and Kelbajar pending the future referendum on the region’s status.
Later in 2021, another former Armenian 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 also said he is ready to “play the fool or look a bit insane” in order to avoid such a settlement.