ARMENPRESS presents the FM’s full interview:
Stephen Sackur: Welcome to Hard Talk: I’m Stephen Sackur. Armenia is a small state with outsized strategic significance, in the Caucasus region, beset with tension and hostility. Last year, popular protests delivered a so-called Velvet Revolution, which saw a new government installed in Yerevan. In an ambitious talk of reform, my guest is the Foreign Minister in that government, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan. Is Armenia looking East or West for political and economic inspiration? Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, welcome to Hard Talk.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Thank you.
Stephen Sackur: Last year saw major political upheaval in your country - Armenia, the so-called Velvet Revolution, after which You and Your government claimed, that you were working for a new Armenia. Sceptics will say that it’s very much like the old Armenia. So, what’s
different?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Why would they say that?
Stephen Sackur: Because, for example, You, were an official for many years under previous regimes. You are a man of great governmental experience, you know, you aren’t new at all.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: I’ve made a choice of my own, I’ve made a choice to move from diplomatic career to politics. That’s the major change. I took out the responsibility to share with the government, in which I am, and this is a major change. The government has received a huge mandate from the people, from the public, as a result of the Revolution we have reached. The government has reacted to those popular demands, and received solid mandate, to deliver the change. And we have demonstrated the very strong part of political will, in which with political will you can deliver very quickly results, which were stemmed from the popular demand, and those concerned corruption, those concerned fair equal opportunities for all in social and economic life those concerned the fair elections and the biggest challenge we have to deal, is the judicial reform. Those are the various issues. It’s only just a shortlist of various other issues that the government has been addressing.
Stephen Sackur: And you claim, that work has been done very quickly. But we have your Justice minister, just the other day, Mr Badasyan, announcing that the new agency to discover and investigate corruption crimes, the so-called Anti-corruption committee, won't be operational until 2021…
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Absolutely, you know, that’s what I was telling about the power of political will. We absolutely understand that with political will you can deliver results, but that is not sufficient. You have to institutionally consolidate the system, which can react to those phenomena.
Stephen Sackur: Does it take two years to set up a committee.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: No, no, this is something rather complicated, and more complex. You are working on institutional capacity to address the phenomenon of corruption. And that is something more serious. And, in fact, we are working on this not just within the country, but also with our international partners, specifically the regional partners, the European Union, the Council of Europe, others are very important figures.
Stephen Sackur: We are not talking about the future, but there is some hubris in your government, because the PM Mr. Pashinyan told European MPs not so long ago and here is the direct quote: “We have managed to root out systemic corruption”. That is apparently not true.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Why not?
Stephen Sackur: Well, for example, only a few weeks after he said it, there were serious accusations, put in the head of the door of the Anti-corruption agency, the man, that the PM himself had appointed. It did raise some very significant questions about whether the PM is really across what is happening in terms of official corruption.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: No, no. I don’t know what you are referring to, but as I am saying, within the country, within months, we have been capable to deliver a strong message, that there will be no more suitcases carried to the powerhouse...
Stephen Sackur: They will need suitcases full of money. It was not happening a long time ago.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: No more unfair conditions in the economic and social fields, no more of this phenomena. And this has been oppressed head on to combine political will with the institutional capacity.
Stephen Sackur: Mr. Sanasaryan, who is a close associate of the PM, who was put in charge of the State control service, the current anti-corruption agency, and now he is facing charges himself. When the Armenian people see this unfold, how can they have confidence?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: The system has been reacting, hasn't it? The system has been reacting.
Stephen Sackur: But my point is that the Prime Minister assured Europe that he rooted out systemic corruption before…
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: The Prime-Minister… let’s not make it so simplistic. As I am saying institutional capacity has to be in place, institutional capacity is the biggest challenge,the biggest priority, to institutionally consolidate what we want to achieve in the country, what we have been delivering on the mandate of the people, which has brought this government to power. That’s our biggest challenge.
Stephen Sackur: Will the rule of law come out on top?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: This is what we are absolutely aiming at. This is our mandate, there is no other priority for the government but exactly to deliver those specific priorities - rule of law, independence, impartiality of the judiciary, creating a condition within which we can achieve that necessary level of reasonable trust in the judiciary.
Stephen Sackur: You say it is about institution building, you say it will take some time, I understand that, anybody would understand that, In the meantime we look at other signals to suggest there is real change as a result of Velvet Revolution. One arena where we must look for change is the state of the stalemated conflict, between your country and neighbouring Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. I have seen no evidence that your government has brought new ideas, new imagination to this conflict.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Thank you. Look when we achieved the objectives domestically with the Revolution, there was no question about what our foreign policy priorities are. Our foreign policy priorities have been quite constant, this is about sustained national security architecture within Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh is a huge security challenge to Armenia, to our people. For us this is first of all a question of security of our compatriots, security of the human, of a hundred fifty thousand compatriots. We have engaged, our government has engaged without hesitation, immediately in the process and we have engaged in a constructive way. We are absolutely cognizant of the benefits of peace, we want peace, we want to achieve that, but we want to do it in a way which sustains the reasonable parity of commitments of the parties so that we do address in a reasonable way, we do address our ultimate priorities of security and status of people of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Stephen Sackur: You tell me Minister, you want peace. Explain to me then why in August, just a few months ago, the Prime-Minister made a very high profile speech in which he declared in no uncertain terms “Karabakh is Armenia and period.”
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Right.
Stephen Sackur: And he wants peace?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: He does want peace, because the Prime-Minister of Armenia has been saying that the solution that we have to achieve has to be acceptable to the people of Armenia, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and the people of Azerbaijan. We have been waiting from Azerbaijan a signal, a message which refers to our interests, which refers to our concerns, which refers to the concerns of the security of people of Nagorno-Karabakh. They have been refusing to do.
Stephen Sackur: I have to be honest with you, when a Prime-Minister declares “Karabakh is Armenia and period,” When he knows that it flies in the face of international law, the position of the UN and all of the independent international agencies, I am struggling to see how that is a move, a gesture towards peace, particularly when he also formed out by leading the crowd during that particular speech with chants of unification, national slogans that have been heard in the eighties and nineties during the war with Azerbaijan and you are telling me your Prime-Minister is devoted to make peace.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: I am telling you that because the Armenian agenda, the pan-Armenian agenda concerns Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is following, pursuing, development agenda, agenda of consolidation, and it does not leave out the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, that is a pan-Armenian agenda. We are a nation which is within a territory of the Republic of Armenia, but a nation of global nature.
Stephen Sackur: But you have to recognize the international law.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Within that Nagorno-Karabakh is a land with our compatriots, we been….
Stephen Sackur: No question that Armenian people live on that territory but that territory is not Armenia.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: No. What I am saying is that Nagorno-Karabakh is a territory in which our compatriots live, a territory in which we care about their security, we are the sole guarantors of their security, but we are committed to the peace process, in which the security and status of Nagorno-Karabakh are ultimate priorities, we are committed to the peace process. We have not been detracting from the peace process in any way.
Stephen Sackur: Hang on Minister, let me just ask you a question, your closest military ally is in many ways the Russians, they have a military base on your territory, you work with them for a long long time. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, after this rather extraordinary straight statement by your Prime Minister just a couple of months ago, who said that the sides are making statements, a serious one, that Karabakh is Armenia, he said “It's the same as if the Prime Minister of Albania said from Tirana that Kosovo is Albania”. So even the Russians are now saying that your position is unacceptable.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Now, I have to repeat again - the Prime Minister of Armenia has been consistently insisting that we need a message, a message of compromise from Azerbaijan, we haven't been hearing. When the Prime Minister of Armenia went out insisting that the solution should be acceptable to all the people - people of Armenia, people of Azerbaijan and the people of Nagorno Karabakh, he has been receiving, our government has been receiving a lot of criticism. But we insist on it, we insist that the compromise is the way out, a compromise in which there is a parity of commitments. In fact in that same speech, he has been referring to solution of the Nagorno Karabakh issue within a separate paragraph, in which he was quite consistent with our approach on a compromised solution.
Stephen Sackur: Just couple of more things on this vexed issue of the conflict which of course began in the 1980-s and hasn't been solved. It seems to me that it needs an imagination to get out of the stalemate. Are you prepared to be imaginative and in the spirit of reconciliation, to acknowledge that over the last 20 years and more the Armenian military has been responsible for very serious abuses. The United Nations has concluded them, the European Court of Human Rights has concluded, independent groups like Amnesty International have talked about the abuses of your armed forces. If you want to change the dynamic with this new government, are you prepared to say “yes, we have been responsible for serious abuses in the past”.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: You are twisting the narrative a little bit. Armenia, the Armenians, the state of Armenia happens to be the only guarantor of the security of Nagorno-Karabakh, what we have is the security arrangement for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Stephen Sackur: Please answer my question.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: That’s what I am doing. We have been responsible, we bear that responsibility, we bear that role of the security guarantor and we have been engaged in negotiations in a way that we work out parametres...
Stephen Sackur: You are not answering my question. I’ll try one more time - the Human Rights Watch Report, it's the big report in 1995, it said Armenian forces, with the support of the Republic of Armenia were responsible for the majority of abuses during that period of war. And as recent as 2017, the European Court of Human Rights delivered 12 judgements concerning Armenia, 11 found the country in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights. So all I am asking, is whether you are prepared to say “in the past, mistakes were made, abuses happened“-- and then you, as well as Azerbaijan, need to express regret for that and try to seek a solution?
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: This is a part of moving forward, that is true. At the moment, we also have to figure out the way in which we can press our biggest priority, the security of the people.
Stephen Sackur: You do or you do not express regret for some of the things your military did in the past.
Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: Because you know, in the beginning of 90-s there was a situation when 40% of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh was wiped out, 40% of the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh has been taken control of, there have been abuses, there have been violations in the most outrageous way. We have a situation, let me finish, when the government of Azerbaijan has gone so far as glorifying the murder of an Armenian. Not long ago, there was a situation when in 2016, Azerbaijan attempted again an aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh, that only amplifies our sense of security now. Referring to your specific question, yes, I accept that we need to move forward all together. All of us. But it takes every party to engage in a constructive way. This is what the Prime Minister was saying - a solution is acceptable to all. We are waiting for the message from Azerbaijan to reciprocate, so that spirit does get the foundation in our move forward.
Stephen Sackur: The ...
