"Armenia recognized Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan," said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan while delivering a speech during the Government Hour in the parliament, Ednews reports.
"If before the Madrid principles, the place of self-determination of Karabakh was the USSR, after the Madrid principles, as a result of the "brilliant" diplomacy of the Armenian side, Azerbaijan became the place of self-determination of Karabakh," Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan noted that according to the Madrid principles, Armenia recognized Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan, and they are "collecting the fruits of that document today".
"Our mistake was that we should have said this back in May 2018, but we thought that we could somehow get out of this trap in the future. We could not do it because the trap was agreed upon at the international level," added N. Pashinyan.
Pashinyan noted that "before the Madrid principles, the position of the Armenian side was that Karabakh has never been part of independent Azerbaijan and uses the right to self-determination in the context of the collapse of the USSR."
"Other subjects of the USSR, based on the provisions of the Alma-Ata Declaration, exercised their right to self-determination and gained independence, including Karabakh, and as a result, Karabakh separated from the USSR," Pashinyan added.
Prime Minister noted that the Madrid principles emerged during the transfer of power in Armenia in 2007 when Serzh Sargsyan was the Prime Minister and Robert Kocharyan was the President, and territorial integrity and the right to self-determination were reflected here: "It was determined this time that the status of Karabakh should be regulated by a mechanism to be agreed upon by Azerbaijan as well, and so a very serious conceptual change took place. According to the information from reliable sources, the author of the Madrid principles was namely the Armenian side.
If we do not consider Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan, then why should the issue of its status be agreed upon with Azerbaijan?
This logically means that Karabakh must be a part of Azerbaijan for its self-determination. Otherwise, from whom does it define its self-determination?
So, our biggest mistake is we didn’t explain this to the people in 2018.
Having excluded Karabakh from the negotiation process, Armenia later said “I have come here to use Karabakh’s right to self-determination.”
In response to this, they told Armenia that if you tell this, then it is a territorial dispute, a territorial claim.
“The whole essence of the Karabakh issue has been deformed,” Pashinyan noted.
