Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan today admitted that official Yerevan is not raising the issue of Nagorno Karabakh’s status during negotiations with Baku to normalize relations.

Mirzoyan, at a joint session of the country’s parliamentary standing committees, said Yerevan has no mandate from Karabakh Armenians to negotiate on their behalf.

This is an apparent reversal of Yerevan’s policy following the 2020 Karabakh war.

Prior to the war, Yerevan had assumed the role of negotiating on behalf of Karabakh. Moreover, the Artsakh government was not even represented during international talks to settle the conflict.

Following his election as prime minister in 2018, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan went so far as to announce that “Artsakh is Armenia. Period.”

Mirzoyan repeated the new position of Pashinyan’s government that any settlement of the conflict must be brokered in direct talks between the Karabakh government and Baku.

“No one in the world can deny that there are many open questions related to the security and rights of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, gas and electricity stoppages are proof of this. Those issues should be discussed and addressed not by us, but by the people of Nagorno Karabakh and its elected bodies and authorized institutions. We should try to ensure the beginning, the mechanism, the platform of that dialogue," said Mirzoyan. 

Regarding the demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, Mirzoyan said the sides still must agree on what maps to use, adding that Yerevan and Baku recognize the other’s territorial integrity.

“We are concerned that there is a deliberate attempt to tear off new territories from Armenia, in one case small, in another case big We are interested in that border line being fixed as clearly and as soon as possible,” Mirzoyan said.

Referring to the Armenian-Turkish settlement process, Mirzoyan said no preconditions have ever been proposed by Turkey, including the recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.