Yerevan /Mediamax/. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has covered comprehensively the Nagorno-Karabakh issue during his speech at the UN National Assembly.

Mediamax presents below the mentioned part of the Prime Minister’s speech.

“Peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is of key importance to stability and security in our region. Since my very first day in the office, I have been working in that context, and for that purpose I stated that any resolution of the conflict must be acceptable for the people of Armenia, Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

It should be noted that I was the first Armenian leader to make such a statement. I was harshly criticized in my country for voicing the format of settlement, which puts an equal sign between all three parties to the conflict. Nevertheless, I believe that it is the key to peaceful settlement, because it implies the possibility of compromise, mutual respect and a balanced approach.

I expected similar statement from Azerbaijan to move forward. However, the leadership of Azerbaijan maintained its stance, seeking a solution that would be acceptable only for the people of Azerbaijan.

What does it mean in practice? It means that the leadership of Azerbaijan has no intention to solve this conflict. Instead, they want to defeat the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. They do not want to compromise. Their objective is revenge for failure which they suffered in the 1990s and in 2016 in their attempts of aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. For that purpose, they ignite anti-Armenian mood among their own people, spend huge amounts of resources on armaments, and for that purpose Armenophobia has become the official policy in Azerbaijan.

In fact, Azerbaijan wants to bring Karabakh back to the status it had in the Soviet Union. But it is a pointless effort, because in the Soviet period the Autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence and defined itself the same as Azerbaijan did when it exited the USSR. Azerbaijan’s objective would mean restoration of the Soviet Union.

The government of Azerbaijan presents the Karabakh conflict as a territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We fundamentally disagree with that interpretation. It is not a dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This conflict is not about territorial claims. It is about people, the men and women and their right to live in their homeland the same as their ancestors had lived there for centuries.

Unfortunately, the leadership of Azerbaijan does not want to speak about these people and negotiate with them, because it wants the lands and not the people. More accurately, Azerbaijan wants the lands without the people.

I call upon my Azerbaijani colleague, President Ilham Aliyev, to accept the format I mentioned in order to create conditions for advancing the peace talks. Any solution of the Karabakh conflict must be acceptable for the people of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. We must work together to realize this format.”