Government Making Not Just Political, But Also Moral Concessions: Shahnazaryan

Armenian National Congress (HAK) representative Davit Shahnazaryan during his speech today noted that the opposition has two ways out: victory and victory. He spoke on foreign policy issues; in particular, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“The Armenian government’s actions in the issue of settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have resulted in the government making not only political, but also moral concessions,” he said. 

Shahnazaryan also said that for the first time, the OSCE Minsk Group in their statement used the Azerbaijani name (Khankendi) for Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

“But in 1992, Armenia had an agreement that only the proper names before 1998 were to be used in international documents. Changing that situation was Azerbaijan’s long-standing dream. Armenia’s and, regretfully, Nagorno-Karabakh’s authorities have agreed for the UN international observer group to visit the territories under the control of NKR forces. It’s HAK’s position that that could’ve been allowed only if the observer group also visited the Karabakh territories occupied by Azerbaijan. That is, today Baku is dictating the rules of the settlement game,” explained the opposition member.

Shahnazaryan said that for that reason, “HAK has proposed its draft resolution which will allow Armenia not only to avoid new concessions, but also to put Azerbaijan in a difficult situation, when we will return to the real reasons for the war, and that is Azerbaijan’s aggression.”

According to Shahnazaryan, Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ignored HAK’s proposal, since it’s thinking “what concessions should it make, so that the government today remains in its seat.”