By Mark Dovich
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has announced that Armenia is ready to accept border observers from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led security bloc.
“Not only is Russia ready, but Armenia is also ready,” Pashinyan told reporters Thursday. “We have outlined the scope of our concerns, and, in fact, our objective is to make the potential mission effective. This is important both for Armenia, and the CSTO, and the region. And we continue to work in that direction.”
CSTO leaders proposed deploying monitors to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border at a summit in Yerevan last November, but Pashinyan rejected the offer, citing the alliance’s failure to condemn Azerbaijan’s major assault on three dozen Armenian municipalities two months prior.
Nonetheless, Russia has stressed its readiness to deploy border monitors to the region on several occasions since. Earlier this month, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, reiterated that “both Russia and other allies are ready for this,” adding, “the ball is in Yerevan’s court.”
What’s more, Pashinyan told reporters Thursday that his administration’s “expectations for the CSTO mission should be much higher than (its expectations) for the EU mission,” referring to the European Union’s February deployment of its own monitors to the Armenian side of the border with Azerbaijan. Moscow has repeatedly decried Brussels’ mission as an act of outside meddling in the region.
Unlike the EU, “the CSTO has security obligations toward Armenia,” Pashinyan noted.
Thursday’s remarks represented Pashinyan’s second major announcement this week, having said earlier this week that his administration recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
“A peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan will become realistic if the countries clearly and without ambiguities or pitfalls recognize each other’s territorial integrity,” Pashinyan told lawmakers Tuesday. “I now want to reaffirm that Armenia fully recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, and we expect that Azerbaijan will do the same.”
Continuing, Pashinyan said that “we have deceived ourselves, the people of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh” on the issue of the latter’s status.
“Throughout the entire period of Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination have been placed side by side. This actually has recorded realities that we have not acknowledged, but which, regardless of our acknowledgment, exist,” Pashinyan explained.
“In this context, the right to self-determination means that you are asking to review conditional status A,” he said. “We have said that we want status B for Nagorno-Karabakh, but we have never publicly recognized status A.”
Pashinyan then proceeded to reiterate his calls for an “international mechanism for negotiations and dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert…ensuring the rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The remarks were met with outrage in Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting lawmakers there to issue a lengthy statement rejecting Pashinyan’s comments as “unacceptable.”
Pashinyan hit back Thursday, lamenting that his positions are “usually misunderstood” in Stepanakert.
