Armenian PM says concept of Nagorno-Karabakh's right to self-determination implied autonomy within Azerbaijan

YEREVAN, February 19. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says the concept of Nagorno-Karabakh's right to self-determination implied its autonomy within Azerbaijan.

Speaking at a meeting with members of the Armenian community of Munich on Sunday, Nikol Pashinyan said that "what we perceived as Artsakh's (Nagorno-Karabakh's) right to self-determination and on which our entire policy had been based since 1994 and even earlier, in reality had a different meaning."

Pashinyan recalled the the OSCE Lisbon summit in December 1996 provided an explanation of what the concept of Karabakh's rright to self-determination meant. According to Pashinyan, this position was shared by the entire international community, except Armenia.

Pashinyan said according to the Lisbon summit, "the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh was to be solved by providing it with the status of high autonomy within Azerbaijani Republic..

'The problem is that initially we ignored this truth and the authorities did not explain it to the people. It seemed to us that we could 'break through' the international community and achieve our goal. It seemed to us that we were in conflict with Azerbaijan, but in fact we were in conflict with the entire international community, which is unreasonable. And there were forces in Armenia that encouraged this perception," Pashinyan said. --0--