Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan revealed the reasons for his silence over the past one month in an interview to the Fifth Channel on Friday, stating the Armenian society needed some time to know "the whole truth" about the war in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which would make his remarks “more substantial".
In Kocharyan’s words, unfortunately, it took thousands of casualties and the loss of almost a third of the homeland for the public to realize “the bitter truth” that the so-called “people's government” brought its own people to their knees.
Asked whether it was possible to avoid the war, the former president said: "Undoubtedly. I am sure that the Armenian authorities did their best to make the war inevitable. They simply did everything possible. We can just look through the points. I have nothing new to tell you, as I was following the media over the past month, almost everything is stated there. We can just summarize it all to see the whole picture.”
“First, the negotiation process was brought to a deadlock. The contradictory statements created a situation where even the co-chairs could not really understand what the Armenian side wanted. And the impression was that Armenia was just inventing various tricks to push the talks into a dead end. The war started at a time when almost no one doubted that the negotiation process was disrupted or failed because of the Armenian side,” the ex-president said.
According to him, the Armenian authorities legitimized the Azerbaijani military aggression against Artsakh.
"The legal basis for the existence of the Artsakh Republic is the exercise of the right of nations to self-determination. Now, in fact we changed our statements and brought the settlement of the issue to the plane of the territorial integrity of countries. That is the reason why the international community viewed the Azerbaijani aggression as the restoration of its territorial integrity. How many countries have condemned Azerbaijan for starting a war? Can you tell me? How can we describe this other than a diplomatic collapse, a failure?” he said.
The former president held the Armenian premier responsible for both issues.