The ambassador of France to Armenia, Olivier Decottignies, who had been taking strong pro-Armenian positions, surprised everyone last week by falsely telling Armenia’s Public Radio that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was not the first Armenian leader to recognize that Artsakh belonged to Azerbaijan.
Decottignies added: “Armenia has accepted, recognized that Nagorno Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, ever since the adoption of the Alma Ata Declaration [in 1991], because Nagorno Karabakh was a region of Soviet Azerbaijan. Therefore, those who claim that Nagorno Karabakh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan in 2022 in Prague are lying, because Nagorno Karabakh has been recognized by Armenia as part of Azerbaijan since the Alma Ata Declaration.”
This is an undiplomatic and false statement from the representative of a country friendly with Armenia. Why would the French ambassador make such a wrong claim? There may be three reasons:
1) To absolve French President Emmanuel Macron of blame for mediating along with then President of the European Council Charles Michel talks in Prague on October 6, 2022, with Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, where Pashinyan recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, accepting that Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan based on the Alma Ata Declaration of 1991.
2) To justify and support Pashinyan’s teetering rule against his domestic opponents after handing over Artsakh to Azerbaijan.
3) To improve the damaged Azerbaijan-France relations.
The statement issued after the quadrilateral 2022 Prague meeting confirmed that Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to the Alma Ata 1991 Declaration, “recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” meaning that Artsakh belongs to Azerbaijan. Subsequently, Pashinyan explicitly and falsely claimed multiple times that, based on the Alma Ata Declaration, Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan.
By making such a statement, Pashinyan’s intent was to shift the blame onto Armenia’s former leaders for giving Artsakh to Azerbaijan in 1991, long before he came to power in 2018.
There are several errors in the statements of the French ambassador and Pashinyan:
The Alma Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991, did not include any reference to Artsakh. It stated that the 11 former Soviet Republics, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, “recognize and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of the existing borders.”
Pres. Levon Ter Petrosyan, on his way back from Alma Ata in 1991, told Soviet Television that when the Declaration is ratified by the Supreme Council of Armenia, a reservation will be added regarding the status of Nagorno Karabakh’s autonomy “so that we can obtain solid guarantees for the existence of Nagorno Karabakh as an autonomous entity.”
On February 18, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia ratified the December 8, 1991 Minsk agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was the precursor to the Alma Ata Declaration. Given the fact that Artsakh held a referendum on Dec. 10, 1991, declaring the establishment of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, the Supreme Council of Armenia added the following reservation, which applied to Artsakh: All former autonomous entities of the USSR, which had previously held a referendum declaring their independence, can join the CIS.
The Supreme Council of Armenia reaffirmed its position on Artsakh in a decision on July 8, 1992, stating that it considers unacceptable any document that mentions the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
On April 15, 1994, the president of Armenia refused to sign the “Declaration on respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and immunity of borders of the state parties of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” out of concern that Azerbaijan would use that document against Artsakh.
The preamble of the 1995 Constitution of Armenia contains a reference to the Declaration of Independence, which in turn refers to the 1989 joint decision of Soviet Armenia’s Supreme Council and the Artsakh National Council on the “Reunification of the Armenian SSR Supreme Council and the Mountainous Region of Karabakh.”
Finally, during the 1996 OSCE Lisbon Summit, the Armenian government vetoed a resolution, which would have given the highest degree of self-government to Nagorno Karabakh within Azerbaijan.
After all the above references to the separate status of Artsakh from Azerbaijan, how can Pashinyan claim that the former leaders of Armenia gave Artsakh to Azerbaijan? If that were the case:
Why did Azerbaijan not occupy Artsakh from 1991 to 2020?
Why did Azerbaijan launch a major war in 2020 to conquer Artsakh, losing thousands of soldiers?
Why have Armenian soldiers battled Azerbaijani troops since 1991?
Why did the Armenian government for decades, including during Pashinyan’s rule, station soldiers of the Armenian army in Artsakh?
Why did the Armenian government contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Artsakh’s budget, if Artsakh were part of Azerbaijan?
Why did the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell state in the European Parliament in 2023 that “Armenia has recognized Nagorno Karabakh as an integral part of Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan is the first Armenian leader to make such a statement”?
Why did Pashinyan stand in front of the people of Artsakh in Stepanakert on August 5, 2019 and declare, “Artsakh is Armenia, period,” if Artsakh had been given to Azerbaijan?
Why did the Minsk Group of mediators, co-headed by France, Russia and the United States, try for decades to find a solution on the status of Artsakh, if it were recognized by Armenia as part of Azerbaijan in 1991?
The answer to all of these questions is that Armenia’s former leaders did not hand over Artsakh to Azerbaijan. Pashinyan was the first Armenian leader to recognize Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.
Harut Sassounian
By Arbitration Award of US President Woodrow Wilson (WWAA)(10/22/1920), the USA had solved the Armenian Question and is obliged to implement it. The decision was and (” …it is final without possibility of appeal…). On 03/16/1921, the Bolsheviks disregarded WWAA and dictated their will to Armenians, by Lenin-Ataturk, and the Kars (10/23/2021) Agreements (LAKA). There is no doubt that LAKA are illegal (neither of the signatories were the subjects of International Law). We must demand from the US administration the implementation of WWAA. After sending 54 letters to the President J. Biden( now to D.Trump )to demand. Four responses, which we got from the “White House” in 2024, didn’t reflect the essence of our request, signed by more than 26.000 people(collection of signatures continues. Please go to Facebook, Change.org, and participate in a petition if you agree with the details of the petition. 01/25/2025 Supreme Court of Russia, after years of legal battle about the illegality of LAKA, responded to the lawsuit initiated and carried by Lawyer Georgy Antonov Mirzakhanyan (Armenian Union of Kuzbas region, Russia). The following is the excerpt from the 2 page response letter in Russian, (English translation by “Google”).
“Judge of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation O.N. Nefedov responded (01/25/2025)to Mirzakhanyan’s lawsuit…
==Refuse the regional public organization (Union of Armenians of the Kemerovo Region-Kuzbas) to accept an administrative claim to challenge international legal acts…. The ruling can be appealed to the appellate board of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation within 15 days==.”
The next legal step is to go to the “International Court of Justice”. We were unable to revitalize WWAA.
All other agreements are inferior compared with WWAA. The president of the US, 50 states, Senate, Congress recognized ARMENIAN GENOCIDE without mentioning the WWAA.
Thank you Mr. Harut Sassounian for another good article. Unfortunately the discussions are not in the legal field where the solution is expected. It is WWAA. In Dictatorial Russia Georgy Antonov Mirzakhanyan completed his job. We are not just late. We in the US didn’t even start the legal case of implementation of WWAA. In reality, we got 4 “empty” responses for our 54 petition-letters.