News - Pashinyan: Karabakh should have autonomous status within Azerbaijan, be governed by local Armenians, Azerbaijanis

You wrote one thing in the program and you present the exact opposite here. You were talking about ensuring the protection and security of Artsakh's right to self-determination, but you are talking about other results and consequences. Artsvik Minasyan, secretary of the opposition “Armenia” Faction, stated this addressing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during Wednesday’s parliamentary debates on the performance of the Armenian government in 2023. "What is the solution for a country declared as a bastion of democracy? Resignation, removal [from power], elections, and a new government because if the program has changed, there are no specified approaches, then such a government cannot be legitimate. Your aspiration to keep power does not allow you to take this step. And in the end, is a referendum solution required or not for the territories?" asked Minasyan. In response, Pashinyan said: "You are right. The right of self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] is written in our program. I came, I said: people, the right of self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh, let's deal with it, it is not what we meant because the word ‘self-determination,’ unfortunately, is one of the few things which the Armenians did not create. And those who created the word and term ‘self-determination’ say: yes, Nagorno-Karabakh has the right to self-determination, the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination must be protected, and Nagorno-Karabakh must have an autonomous status within Azerbaijan. With the 1996-98 processes, in order to seize and hold the power in Armenia, it was presented in a different light, and assurances were given from some places that we ‘will solve everything.’" According to Pashinyan, the right to self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh is not what they had in mind because, sadly, the word "self-determination" was not created by Armenians. "When I said that we should lower the bar [on Nagorno-Karabakh status], I followed the pre-election program. Do you know why Nagorno-Karabakh was de-Armenianized? With the very truth that Nagorno-Karabakh should have an autonomous status within Azerbaijan and be governed by two entities: the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijanis? This was the irreversible point of the negotiations, which I inherited in 2018," said the Armenian PM.