News - Armenia parliament opposition leader: Peace agenda with Azerbaijan is fake

What we have said all these years is confirmed in the sense that succeeding after the war of 2020, Azerbaijan and the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem continue and will continue speaking in the “language” of pressures, coercion with Armenia. Seyran Ohanyan, head of the opposition Armenia Faction of the National Assembly (NA) and former defense minister of Armenia, told this to reporters at the NA Monday. "The peace agenda is fake, it is a deception for Armenia. There cannot be a peace treaty [with Azerbaijan] because the [Armenian] authorities that lost the war are always under coercion and pressure, that agenda is one-sided. From our side it is begging for peace, whereas from the adversary: coercion of peace towards Armenia. And that is why [Azerbaijani president Ilham] Aliyev's rhetoric has not changed, he presents new demands to Armenia at each phase. "We understand that having completely de-Armenianized Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)], committing genocide against Artsakh, they [i.e. the Azerbaijani] have now moved on to continuing the pressure on Armenia. For them now, the so-called ‘Zangezur corridor,’ the opening of those infrastructures, and Syunik [Province of Armenia] for us is a guarantee of security so that they can communicate with each other and assist each other. "Our colleagues got familiarized with the peace treaty. I will not touch on its closed part, but I will say that there is no word there about the obligations that Azerbaijan should take upon itself. I mean leaving the sovereign territory of Armenia, carrying out border demarcation and delimitation," said Ohanyan. He noted that Azerbaijan committed genocide in a part of the Armenian homeland, and he does not believe that the normal authorities should extend their hands in this situation and say: “we are going for peace.” According to Ohanyan, if Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan had normal state agencies that would have conventionally assessed the military and political situation at the time, they would have seen long ago that Azerbaijan's proposal for peace is a deception. "He [i.e. Pashinyan] realizes it belatedly. Today we see that the Armenian authorities are doing everything belatedly. After stopping the war actions, they gave a general order and withdrew the troops, not realizing that every inch of land will later be the basis for carrying out border delimitation, demarcation, and advancing our interests in negotiations. When the war stopped, they did not realize that the primary task is border protection, the army should be replenished quickly. Today, we see the same in the foreign political sphere, when they are being ‘swallowed’ by the Turkish-Azerbaijani deception," said the leader of the Armenian parliamentary opposition.