Pashinian claimed last month that all those plans considered by Armenia’s former governments were about “returning Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.” He said that his “big mistake” was not to make this clear to Armenians after coming to power in 2018.
Former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian unanimously countered that Pashinian continues to distort the history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process that was decades mediated by the United States, Russia and France. Pashinian responded by challenging them to a televised debate on the issue. They all scoffed at the offer.
Ter-Petrosian also challenged Pashinian to publicize the peace proposals put forward by the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group from 1994 onwards along with Yerevan’s official responses to them.
“That would be a real debate based on facts,” the 79-year-old ex-president said in a December 25 statement. “And if you don't do that, you will prove once again that you are running away from the truth and are busy cowardly dodging historical responsibility.”
Answering relevant questions from RFE/RL’s Armenian Service submitted last week, Pashinian’s office said he has instructed the Armenian Foreign Ministry to “inventory the negotiation papers available at the ministry” for their possible publication. It said he will decide whether or not to publicize them after assessing the matter “from the standpoint of Armenia's national security interests.”
Some Armenian public figures have also called for the disclosure of the Karabakh peace proposals. Most of them were based on so-called Madrid Principles which the three mediating powers originally put forward 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 Azerbaijani districts around Karabakh occupied in the early 1990s. Karabakh’s internationally recognized status would be determined through a future referendum.
Pashinian has repeatedly criticized the Madrid Principles since the 2020 war in Karabakh. In particular, he claimed in 2021 that the mediating powers sought a “surrender of lands” to Azerbaijan and offered the Armenian side nothing in return. The Russian Foreign Ministry bluntly denied the claim at the time.
Pashinian’s office did not mention the Madrid Principles in its written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. It pointed instead to a 1996 statement by the then OSCE chairman-in-office which said Karabakh should have the “highest degree of self-rule within Azerbaijan.”
The office also claimed that the prime minister brought up the issue again because he believes “a number of external forces” and their “internal allies” in Armenia are again exploiting the Karabakh issue in a bid to prevent Armenia from becoming a truly independent state. It did not name them.
Armenian opposition leaders say Pashinian simply keeps trying to absolve himself of blame for Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war and Azerbaijan’s subsequent recapture of Karabakh. They say he made the disastrous war inevitable by rejecting the last version of the Madrid Principles drafted in 2019.