Artur Khachatrian and three other opposition members of the Armenian parliament tried to add a relevant amendment to a statement adopted by the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly on Thursday at the end of a three-day session in Yerevan. It said that Baku must ensure a “safe collective return of the forcibly displaced Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to their homeland under international protection.”
The amendment did not pass, with most members of the assembly bringing together lawmakers from the European Union and several ex-Soviet states seeking closer ties with the EU abstaining from the vote.
“I want to let you now that the Armenian government, officials who are in charge of Armenian foreign policy currently do not present such demand to Azerbaijan,” Arman Yeghoyan of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party told fellow Euronest members before the vote.
According to Khachatrian, only Yeghoyan and the three other pro-government members of the Armenian delegation at Euronest voted against the amendment. One of them, Sargis Khandanian, confirmed Khachatrian’s claim, while another, Maria Karapetian did not deny it.
“Armenia’s foreign and security policy does not include the issue of the return to Nagorno-Karabakh,” Karapetian said, adding that she and other Civil Contract parliamentarians follow that policy.
A satellite image shows a long traffic jam of vehicles along the Lachin corridor as ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh, September 26, 2023.
Khachatrian, who is affiliated with the opposition Hayastan alliance, also claimed that two members of the European Parliament told earlier that the Armenian government is lobbying against any Euronest statements in support for the Karabakh Armenians’ right to return.
“[Prime Minister] Nikol Pashinian’s policy is to fulfill all demands of [Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev because he thinks that his staying in power and reelection fully depends on Aliyev’s whims,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He needs a piece of paper with ‘peace’ written on it … so that he can say, ‘See, we have established peace.’”
Shortly after his August 8 talks with Aliyev hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, Pashinian said the refugees should stop hoping to return to Karabakh and should “settle down” in Armenia instead. He repeated that statement when addressing the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in late September. He said that discussing the repatriation of the Karabakh Armenians and other refugees from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict would be “dangerous for the peace process.”
More than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians, the region’s virtually entire remaining population, fled to Armenia in the space of a week following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 assault condemned by the EU. Azerbaijan denies forcing them out of their homes and says they can live there under Azerbaijani rule.
Karabakh’s leaders and ordinary residents rejected such an option even before the exodus. Some of those leaders have said that only “international guarantees” could convince the refugees to return home. Yerevan has refused to seek such guarantees.