Pashinyan Comments on Washington Declaration, Rejects “Zangezur Corridor” Label

The other day, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told parliament that peace was reached in Washington, despite attempts by some actors to undermine it, Orda.kz reports, citing NewsArmenia.

77.6% of those who stress that Armenia and Azerbaijan only initialed a peace agreement and downplay its significance, in January–February–March predicted that approximately August 8 a war would begin. But they forgot about this, Pashinyan said during a government Q&A session.

He recalled that since 1994, negotiations on the Karabakh settlement had never produced an agreed document beyond a draft declaration.

Responding to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s recent use of the term “Zangezur corridor,” Pashinyan stressed:

There is objective reality and subjective perception. The objective reality is that Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington once again recognized each other’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, jurisdiction and inviolability of borders. From this it follows that through the territory of Armenia such channels of communication may be laid as decided by the Republic of Armenia and on which agreements have been reached.

According to him, the signed document states that infrastructure on Armenian territory will carry the name TRIPP, not “Zangezur corridor.”

Pashinyan also explained why Yerevan accepted the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group after the declaration, rather than waiting for the signing of a full peace treaty with Azerbaijan.

In the peace agreement there is no issue of regulating regional communications. In the (Washington - Ed.) declaration, a number of issues are regulated in a way acceptable to us, which were not included in the peace agreement. We understood that we could not miss this chance because we are getting more, he said.