Armenia provided Nagorno-Karabakh with over $1 billion in funding over last 3 years- Pashinyan

YEREVAN, October 4. /ARKA/. Over the past 3 years Armenia provided Nagorno-Karabakh with over $1 billion in funding, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said today.

"Allegations that the Armenian government has left Nagorno-Karabakh alone is the most unfair accusation of all possible," he said during a government Q&A session in parliament.

In this regard, Pashinyan noted that before the blockade of the Lachin corridor in 2022 December, Nagorno-Karabakh did not need anything in terms of self-defense.

"Nagorno-Karabakh, by and large and according to my analysis, take this as a personal opinion, during this period - before the blockade of the Lachin corridor and during this interval - it did not need anything in terms of self-defense. That is my opinion. I did not say that we would not interfere (in possible hostilities between Karabakh and Azerbaijan), I said that the goal of Azerbaijan was to drag Armenia in military actions. I said we would not be dragged in. But we provided full political support for Nagorno-Karabakh," he said.

Lowering the bar on the Karabakh settlement was agreed upon with partners in Karabakh, Nikol Pashinyan said.

"We lowered the bar. I'll tell you a secret: in coordination with partners from Nagorno-Karabakh. And what happened in the end? We lowered it, but Nagorno-Karabakh raised it - that's the problem. And when Karabakh raised the bar, it did it with the opposition support. If they had kept our agreements, it wouldn't have been like this," he said.

Pashinyan noted that the international community expressed solidarity and invited Karabakh representatives to a meeting with Azerbaijani officials in Sofia, but they were banned from attending it.

In April this year, Pashinyan said that the international community calls on Armenia to lower the bar on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, otherwise it will not be able to provide assistance to the Armenian side. -0-