Pashinyan: Armenia agreed to Russia's proposal to delay Artsakh status settlement

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the trilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi on October 31 “very useful and important”, adding the meeting marked a step towards peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Speaking at a joint meeting of the parliament’s standing committees on Wednesday, the prime minister said Armenia agreed to Russia’s proposal to indefinitely delay a deal on Nagorno-Karabakh’s status.

"You know that our Russian colleagues proposed to indefinitely delay the settlement of the issue related to the Nagorno-Karabakh status because now it is objectively impossible to find a status that would be acceptable to both sides,” Pashinyan said.

“To what extent do the approaches of the Armenian government comply with this concept? I must say that they are 100% consistent with it,” he added.

He highlighted the security of the Artsakh Armenians, their rights and Artsakh’s status as the three key components of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“You have noticed that we have tried to put aside the word “status” as an issue of today’s solution. Why? Because we agreed with our Russian colleagues that we should not try to resolve this issue now because it will lead to an inevitable crisis," the premier said.

At the same time, Pashinyan noted that his proposal on extending the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh was rejected at the Sochi meeting.

"We proposed extending the mandate indefinitely, for 5, 15, 20 years, etc. This proposal was not accepted, but, as far as I understand, the issue is now on the agenda," Pashinyan said.

He recalled that under the November 9, 2020 trilateral statement the mandate of peacekeepers is extended automatically unless one of the sides raises objections six months before the deadline.

"Obviously, the presence of peacekeepers is the most important factor in ensuring the rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, until reliable mechanisms and guarantees for rights and security are in place," Pashinyan said.