Pashinyan Falsely Claims Former Leaders Recognized Artsakh as Part of Azerbaijan — By Harut Sassounian

The Ambassador of France to Armenia, Olivier Decottignies, who had been taking strong pro-Armenian positions, surprised everyone last week by falsely telling Armenia’s Public Radio that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was not the first Armenian leader to recognize that Artsakh belonged to Azerbaijan.

Decottignies added: “Armenia has accepted, recognized that Nagorno Karabagh is part of Azerbaijan ever since the adoption of the Alma Ata Declaration [in 1991] because Nagorno Karabagh was a region of Soviet Azerbaijan. Therefore, those who claim that Nagorno Karabagh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan in 2022 in Prague are lying, because Nagorno Karabagh has been recognized by Armenia as part of Azerbaijan since the Alma Ata Declaration.”

This is an undiplomatic and false statement from the representative of a country friendly with Armenia. Why would the French Ambassador make such a wrong claim? There may be three reasons:

1) To absolve French President Emmanuel Macron of blame for mediating along with then President of the European Council Charles Michel talks in Prague on October 6, 2022, with Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, where Pashinyan recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, accepting that Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan based on the Alma Ata Declaration of 1991.

2) To justify and support Pashinyan’s teetering rule against his domestic opponents after handing over Artsakh to Azerbaijan.

3) To improve the damaged Azerbaijan-France relations.

The statement issued after the quadrilateral 2022 Prague meeting confirmed that Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to the Alma Ata 1991 Declaration, “recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” meaning that Artsakh belongs to Azerbaijan. Subsequently, Pashinyan explicitly and falsely claimed multiple times that based on the Alma Ata Declaration Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan.

By making such a statement, Pashinyan’s intent was to shift the blame onto Armenia’s former leaders for giving away Artsakh to Azerbaijan in 1991, long before he came to power in 2018.

There are several errors in the statements of the French Ambassador and Pashinyan:

— The Alma Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991, did not include any reference to Artsakh. It stated that the 11 former Soviet Republics, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, “recognize and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of the existing borders.”

— Pres. Levon Ter Petrosyan, on his way back from Alma Ata in 1991 told Soviet Television that when the Declaration is ratified by the Supreme Council of Armenia, a reservation would be added regarding the status of Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomy “so that we can obtain solid guarantees for the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous entity.”

— On February 18, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia ratified the December 8, 1991 Minsk Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was the precursor to the Alma Ata Declaration. Given the fact that Artsakh had held a referendum on Dec. 10, 1991, declaring the establishment of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh, the Supreme Council of Armenia added the following reservation which applied to Artsakh: All former autonomous entities of the USSR, which had previously held a referendum declaring their independence, can join the CIS.

— The Supreme Council of Armenia reaffirmed its position on Artsakh in a Decision on July 8, 1992, stating that it considers unacceptable any document that mentions the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh as part of Azerbaijan.

— On April 15, 1994, the President of Armenia refused to sign the “Declaration on the Preservation of Sovereignty, Territorial integrity, and Inviolability of Borders of the Participant States of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” out of concern that Azerbaijan would use that document against Artsakh.

— The Preamble of the 1995 Constitution of Armenia contains a reference to the Declaration of Independence, which in turn refers to the 1989 joint decision of the Soviet Armenia’s Supreme Council and the Artsakh National Council on the “Reunification of the Armenian SSR Supreme Council and the Mountainous Region of Karabagh.”

— Finally, during the 1996 OSCE Lisbon Summit, the Armenian government vetoed a resolution which would have given the highest degree of self-government to Nagorno Karabagh within Azerbaijan.

After all the above references to the separate status of Artsakh from Azerbaijan, how can Pashinyan claim that the former leaders of Armenia had given Artsakh to Azerbaijan? If that were the case:

— Why did Azerbaijan not occupy Artsakh from 1991 to 2020?

— Why did Azerbaijan launch a major war in 2020 to conquer Artsakh, losing thousands of soldiers?

— Why did Armenian soldiers battle Azerbaijani troops after 1991?

— Why did the Armenian government for decades, including during Pashinyan’s rule, station soldiers of the Armenian Army in Artsakh?

— Why did the Armenian government contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Artsakh’s budget, if Artsakh was part of Azerbaijan?

— Why did the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell state in the European Parliament in 2023 that “Armenia has recognized Nagorno Karabagh as an integral part of Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan is the first Armenian leader to make such a statement?”

— Why did Pashinyan stand in front of the people of Artsakh in Stepanakert on August 5, 2019 and declare: “Artsakh is Armenia, period,” if Artsakh had been given to Azerbaijan?

— Why did the Minsk Group of mediators, co-headed by France, Russia and the United States, tried for decades to find a solution to the status of Artsakh, if it was recognized by Armenia to be part of Azerbaijan since 1991?

The answer to all of these questions is that Armenia’s former leaders did not hand over Artsakh to Azerbaijan. Pashinyan was the first Armenian leader to recognize Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.