Azerbaijan's president personally applied to me with request: Armenia's PM opens brackets

After the revolution two people in our government had right to conduct negotiations over Artsakh – foreign affairs minister and me, Armenia’s PM Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with Armenia’s Public TV.

“No other third person had authority to conduct negotiations and discussions,” Pashinyan said.

He stressed that time director of National Security Service played a certain role in ensuring operative communication between him and Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev.

“It was just service function, he did not have authority to conduct negotiations over Karabakh,” Pashinyan said.

The premier stressed about a circumstance he kept silence about for two years from correctness but considering the incomprehensible behavior of Azerbaijan’s president he said he would speak about it.

“They say I asked time… Clearly in Dushanbe when the arrangement was reached, Armenia was interested in enforcement of ceasefire. And what about Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan’s president? Why were they interested in this arrangement? Some of our opposition circles while analyzing understand that the only variant is the existence of conspiracy,” Pashinyan said.

Armenia’s PM said that Azerbaijan’s president applied to him with request.

“The sense of the request was the following: if you remember that time we were having mayoral elections in Yerevan and were conducting rallies every day during which I was referring to the situation in Azerbaijan, was trying to address the people of Azerbaijan, I was also criticizing, and Ilham Aliyev was interested in just one thing – he wanted me to refrain from talks about Azerbaijan,” Pashinyan said, adding that Aliyev personally asked him about it.

Armenia’s PM said that for Azerbaijan's military-political leadership Karabakh issue is not the issue of national interest of Azerbaijan but a way to keep own power and the authoritarian system.