The Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, Ruben Rubinyan, responded to the rejection of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's proposal for a debate on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by the former presidents of Armenia, writing:
"Prime Minister Pashinyan claimed that since 1994, the negotiation process has been about returning Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
Then there were the harsh denials of the camps of the three former presidents, then Pashinyan's invitation to the debate, then the rejection.
And in fact, the reason why the holy tri-presidency rejected Prime Minister Pashinyan's invitation to the debate is that, coming to that debate, Kocharyan and Sargsyan, on the one hand, and Ter-Petrosyan, on the other, would inevitably have to simultaneously deny Pashinyan's claim, but also confirm it.
For example, Ter-Petrosyan would have to justify that the statement is true regarding the Kocharyan-Sargsyan couple.
After all, Ter-Petrosyan himself already substantiated this in 2012, when, criticizing the Madrid principles accepted and published as a basis for negotiations under Kocharyan and Sargsyan, he said:
"This means one thing: when the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination are placed side by side, it means that the self-determination of Karabakh must be resolved within the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, that is, autonomy - autonomy within Azerbaijan. There is nothing else. This means nothing else. Now they say it's a miracle, it's not like that, it's the first time they talk about the right of self-determination mentioned in the Lisbon formula. As much as they say, etc., the Lisbon formula was the same as these Madrid principles."
And although Ter-Petrosyan vetoed the Lisbon resolution (why and what this meant is still a matter of discussion), in 2012 he justified that the Madrid principles mean the autonomy of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, in 2016 he already said:
"Essentially, the same compromise settlement proposal is on the negotiating table today as it was in 1997."
In other words, according to Ter-Petrosyan, the proposal put on the table in 2016 was essentially the same as in 1997, a little worse, but essentially the same. They assumed that Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan.
And Kocharyan and Sargsyan, in their turn, had to explain why, according to them, the phased version of 1997 was so bad. They had to explain how the logic of Lisbon was expressed as Madrid principles To say in 2016 that the proposals on the table in 1997 and 2016 were essentially the same, and therefore, if the Madrid principles implied the autonomy of Karabakh within Azerbaijan, then the 1997 version implied the same.
And, in general, they should have explained why Serzh Sargsyan, Kocharyan's presidential candidate, said in 2008 that Ter-Petrosyan's desire to become president for 3 years is due to the fact that the latter "probably thinks that three years is enough to hand over Karabakh."
Why did Sargsyan say such a thing, if now, in 2024, they claim with their holy trinity and various apostles that everything was going right before Pashinyan, and there were no negotiations about Karabakh becoming a part of Azerbaijan.
But they have already forgotten everything that was said about each other, they don't want to remember, because their goal is not to reveal the truth and think about the future, but to blame and label Pashinyan together through their fan clubs and avatars without going into the content, without actually the risk of receiving a personal backlash.
