News - Armenia PM: Before Granada meeting we had serious opportunity to make breakthrough in peace process

Despite all wars, complications, crises, I have come to the European Parliament with the following main message: Our region, the South Caucasus, needs peace; that is, a state where all the countries of the region live with open borders, are connected by active economic, political, cultural ties, with accumulated experience and tradition of solving all issues diplomatically and through dialogue. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said this during his address Tuesday at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. He added as follows:   “I want to particularly emphasize that we do not oppose our ideas about peace to the interests of our region in any way, because our country can be peaceful if the region is peaceful. And I consider supporting peace building as my main political commitment. “It is not easy to undertake such a commitment, considering the long-standing conflict with Azerbaijan, numerous victims, missing people, prisoners, suffering and despair. “But is peace possible and if so, how? At the beginning of October, before the Granada meeting of the European Political Community, we had a serious opportunity to make a breakthrough in the peace process, but the President of Azerbaijan, unfortunately, refused to come to the meeting of the European Political Community and to accept a joint statement with the President of the European Council, the President of France, the German Chancellor, and me, which should express the principles of establishing peace and relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Those principles and content are not new at all and were formed based on the results of the quadrilateral meeting held in Prague on October 6, 2022, in which the President of France, the President of the European Council, the President of Azerbaijan and I participated. “Those principles were further concretized in 2023, during the Brussels meetings between the President of the European Council, the President of Azerbaijan and myself, and there are public statements about those principles. “The first of the principles is expressed in the Quadripartite Declaration of Granada as follows. I quote: ‘They remain committed to all efforts directed towards the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, based on mutual recognition of sovereignty, inviolability of borders and territorial integrity of Armenia (29.800 km2) and Azerbaijan (86.600 km2), as mentioned in President Michel’s statements of 14 May and 15 July 2023. They called for the strict adherence to the principle of non-use of force and threat of use of force.’ End of quote. “This same principle is expressed as follows in the statement of European Council President Charles Michel following the tripartite meeting held in Brussels on May 14 with the participation of the President of the European Council, the President of Azerbaijan and myself. I quote. ‘The leaders (It’s about the Azerbaijani president and myself) confirmed their unequivocal commitment to the 1991 Almaty Declaration and the respective territorial integrity of Armenia (29,800 km2) and Azerbaijan (86,600 km2).’ End of quote. “Dear attendees, what you need to know additionally on this issue is the following. Following these agreements, I reaffirmed several times that the Republic of Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity of 86 thousand 600 square kilometers of Azerbaijan, but the President of Azerbaijan never made such a statement. Recently, he announced that he recognizes the territorial integrity of Armenia, but did not mention 29 thousand 800, which raises concerns that he is deliberately leaving ambiguities to bring forward territorial claims against Armenia. The agreement to recognize the territorial integrity with exact numbers was reached precisely so that neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan would leave ambiguities when recognizing each other's territorial integrity, for example saying that a part of the territory of the given country does not actually belong to it.”