News - The OSCE Minsk Group was dissolved; the documents are still being discussed.

On December 1, the OSCE completed the Minsk Group process and dissolved its related structures, and on December 2 the Government of Armenia published more than ten documents relating to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Some of them became the subject of discussion among political forces and analysts. “To know wisdom and counsel, to understand words of genius, to perceive the sayings of wisdom, to learn true justice, and to incline toward the law” — a biblical quotation from Proverbs. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan uses this to explain what is needed to understand the negotiating document proposed by the OSCE in 2019. That document, along with twelve other papers, was published on December 2 on the government’s official site under the heading “Documents of the Negotiating Process for the Resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict.” The prime minister had promised to publish more documents by the end of the year, and the proposal had been made by Levon Ter-Petrosyan a year earlier, when the prime minister had invited three presidents to a debate. After publication, the issue of debating it falls off the agenda; there is nothing to debate, the prime minister says. The main reason for the debate and then for publishing the documents is the question: “Who surrendered Artsakh?” The opposition blames the authorities for this and, as a missed opportunity for a settlement, constantly recalls the Minsk Group proposals from 2019, which Pashinyan did not turn into a topic of discussion. The authorities also blame the former leaders, and as evidence on December 2 they publish the letter of Armenia’s third president Serzh Sargsyan to Russian President Vladimir Putin, written on August 5, 2016, after the four-day war. In that letter Sargsyan refers to the contents of the 2016 negotiating document, which, according to the authorities, is a repetition of the 2019 document. The 2019 document and Serzh Sargsyan’s letter were the most discussed among the government-published materials. “What did the 2019 Minsk Group co-chairs propose? The details of the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiating package” — this was the headline of Public Television’s main “News” broadcast on December 2, when the negotiating documents were published. The video about these documents, however, aired at the 14th minute, after reports about the ethics rules governing the coalition government, the notice about the renovated kindergarten, and a segment about a Parliament session. The video discusses the documents, quoting from the accompanying government analysis. The main message: “For decades Armenia has lived with myths about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which, of course, were formed by the political elite who came to power through the Karabakh movement. They formed these myths to justify coming to and remaining in power and they developed them so much that in Armenia it has become a way of thinking; beyond that, the view is a political taboo, treachery.” On the same day, on Public TV, in Petros Kazaryan’s talk show, there is a guest: Gevorg Saroyan, the head of the Artsakh diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Ruben Rubinyan, is a guest on Public in December 3; that day Pashinyan had already spoken about the documents from the Parliament’s rostrum. Rubinyan quotes several excerpts from Serzh Sargsyan’s letter to Putin regarding the 2016 document. He says that the 2019 document is 99 percent a repetition of it, and the concerns raised in the letter were also present in the 2019 document. What was in that document: within Artsakh’s borders, there would be peacekeepers, Armenian forces would withdraw from five districts, and the prospect of a referendum would remain uncertain. A nationwide referendum expressing the will of the entire population of Artsakh; according to Rubinyan, “This does not mean the referendum should be held only in Artsakh, because in Azerbaijan’s understanding that referendum should be held across the entire territory.” Why did Pashinyan’s government, which enjoyed high legitimacy, not negotiate around that document? According to Rubinyan, after the Kazan document the Armenian authorities did not say yes or no to any document; they said, go talk with Azerbaijan. “We have no information from which one could deduce that Azerbaijan agreed in 2019,” says the deputy speaker. Channel 5’s Haylur begins with the news of the documents’ publication. The commentator presents the news as if the documents had just been signed. Then he immediately connects with a guest in the second studio, Benyamin Matevossian. In his view, what is formed in the 2019 document is what had already been formed during the Madrid Principles in the years of the second president Robert Kocharyan’s rule — an unlimited right to self-determination. He says: in other words, Artsakh Armenians could have even joined the Republic of Armenia during the referendum. “Nikol Pashinyan has deprived Artsakh Armenians of the possibility to join Armenia,” the analyst concludes. The news outlet also features a separate video about the published documents, where Bagrat Nikoyan, head of the office of the second president, Robert Kocharyan, speaks. “The mountain bore a mouse, and the mouse died,” he says about the publication of the documents. According to political scientist Tigran Grigoryan, the 2019 document was acceptable both in comparison with the November 9 document and with documents adopted in the 1990s, because, essentially, the question of status was suspended; a new status quo was created, which was recognized by the international community and had some legal grounds. In CivilNet’s studio, he notes that the authorities refused to engage in substantive negotiations around the document. “If even the 2019 document had been adopted, it would not have become reality,” says political analyst Boris Navazartyan in Factor.am’s studio. According to him, Azerbaijan would either not accept it, or would later find a way to derail the agreement. What is being discussed now by political forces, according to Navazartyan, is a pointless exercise due to the upcoming parliamentary elections. “Negotiating documents are of interest to few because their time has passed, and none of the existing documents was realistic to be realized.”