Opposition leaders portrayed the disclosed 2019 plan as further proof of their claims that Pashinian paved the way for the disastrous war instead of accepting a peace deal favorable to the Armenian side. For its part, Pashinian continued to claim that this and other proposals put forward by the United States, Russia and France called for Azerbaijani control over Karabakh.
Most of those proposals were based on so-called Madrid Principles originally put forward by the U.S., Russian and French mediators in 2007. This draft framework agreement, repeatedly modified in the following decade, upheld the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination while calling for their withdrawal from Azerbaijani districts around Karabakh occupied in the early 1990s. Karabakh’s internationally recognized status would be determined through a future referendum. The publicized documents confirm this peace formula.
The three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group presented the conflicting sides with an updated version of the proposed peace deal in 2019, one year after Pashinian came to power. After repeated denials, the premier reluctantly acknowledged this fact in February this year.
Pashinian also effectively admitted in August that he rejected that plan. He said its implementation would have led to the “loss of Armenia’s independence and statehood.”
In an explanatory note released later on Tuesday, Pashinian’s office claimed that the “supposed referendum would take place not in Karabakh but in all of Azerbaijan.” However, the 2019 plan published by it speaks of a “free expression of the will of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population” the results of which would be legally binding for all parties. It also makes clear that “the wording of the question or questions put to the vote will not be limited in any way,” meaning that the Karabakh Armenians would be able to vote for session from Azerbaijan or unification with Armenia.
Senior representatives of Armenian opposition groups led by the country’s three former presidents -- Levon Ter-Petrosian, Serzh Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian -- seized upon these disclosures.
“All our statements have been confirmed,” said Levon Zurabian of Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress. “If the published document were adopted, we would have had peace, lifting of the blockade, de-facto independent Artsakh, control over Kelbajar and Lachin, and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces along the entire perimeter of Artsakh.”
“You rejected that proposal, saying ‘Artsakh is Armenia. Period,’ and we got the war” said Eduard Sharmazanov of Sarkisian’s Republican Party.
The Armenian opposition holds Pashinian responsible for Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war which left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead and predetermined Karabakh’s 2023 recapture by Azerbaijan. Pashinian has put the blame on Kocharian and Sarkisian. The latter lost power more than two years before the outbreak of the war.