Some of them also accused Decottignies of trying to absolve Pashinian as well as French President Emmanuel Macron of blame for the fall of Karabakh.
The Armenian opposition maintains that Pashinian paved the way for Azerbaijan’s recapture of the Armenian-populated region with a statement issued as a result of his 2022 talks in Prague with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev mediated by Macron and then European Council President Charles Michel. The statement cited the December 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration in which Armenia and other newly independent Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders.
Decottignies branded Pashinian’s detractors as liars in an interview with Armenia’s Public Radio publicized over the weekend.
“Armenia has accepted, recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan ever since the adoption of the Alma-Ata Declaration because Nagorno-Karabakh was a region of Soviet Azerbaijan,” he said. “Therefore, those who claim that Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan in 2022 in Prague are lying.”
“With all due respect for France and its representatives, I must say that the ambassador is wrong in this case,” said Levon Zurabian, the deputy chairman of former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress party.
Yerevan signed the 1991 declaration during Ter-Petrosian’s rule. Zurabian stressed that the Armenian parliament ratified it in February 1992 with serious reservations relating to Karabakh.
Zurabian also pointed out that later in 1992 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set up the Minsk Group tasked with brokering a peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
“The basis of that conflict was that Azerbaijan, Karabakh and Armenia had differing views about what Karabakh’s final status should be,” he said. “As soon as Nikol Pashinian stated in Prague that Armenia recognizes Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan it meant an end to negotiations held under the auspices of the Minsk Group because the subject of the conflict was eliminated.”
The group was for decades co-headed by France, Russia and the United States. Eduard Sharmazanov, a leading member of the opposition Republican Party of Armenia led by another ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, argued that the three mediating powers drafted peace plans upholding the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination.
Speaking to journalists, Sharmazanov said that Decottignies is trying to whitewash Pashinian’s Karabakh policy as well as Macron’s personal involvement in the Armenian premier’s 2022 talks with Aliyev.
“Macron knows very well that he has personal participation and guilt in the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Artsakh and is trying to clear himself by declaring through his ambassador that Nagorno-Karabakh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan 34 years ago,” charged another opposition leader, Andranik Tevanian.
The opposition claims were echoed by Hakob Badalian, an independent political analyst. “With his statement, the French ambassador is simply trying to absolve France of responsibility,” he said.
Badalian too cited the Armenian parliament’s conditional ratification of the Alma-Ata Declaration. Pashinian claimed last year that its reservations are not valid under international law.