By Ruzanna Stepanian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — Contradicting his earlier claims, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on February 13 acknowledged that international mediators presented Armenia and Azerbaijan with an updated plan to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict one year after he came to power in 2018.
Armenian opposition leaders have claimed for years that Pashinyan’s failure to accept it paved the way for the disastrous 2020 war in Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s subsequent recapture of the region.
The proposed peace deal was based on the so-called Madrid Principles of a Karabakh settlement originally drafted by the US, Russian and French mediators in 2007. It 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 2019 plan is understood to have been the last version of the Madrid Principles. Pashinyan denied its existence in December 2019.
Pashinyan admitted receiving it in June 2019 during his government’s question-and-answer session in the Armenian parliament on February 13. He played down that fact, though.
“What was put on the table [at that time] was the result of negotiations that took place before me,” Pashinyan said, answering a question from Agnesa Khamoyan of the opposition Hayastan alliance.
