Editor’s note: The following is a translated and republished statement from ARFD.am. Translation from Armenian by our team; minor edits for clarity. Headline retained from the original.
“Azerbaijan, the Aliyev administration, must understand who they have actually met with. These people have no connection or relation whatsoever to the Armenian people. They met with their own agents of influence. Therefore, they cannot represent the Armenian side or the Armenian people,” Ishkhan Saghatelyan, representative of the ARF Armenia Supreme Body and MP of the “Armenia” faction, told journalists in parliament.
He was responding to a question about the meetings in Baku between so-called representatives of Armenian society and high-ranking Azerbaijani officials, as well as about the messages addressed to Armenian society after those meetings.
According to Ishkhan Saghatelyan’s assessment, the Armenian delegates who went to Azerbaijan are people who promote Azerbaijan’s interests in our country and have nothing to do with the Armenian people, Armenian statehood, or our identity.
“These are agents of influence who serve the interests of those states. The only good thing here is that they have already begun doing all this openly.
“As for our prisoners of war held in Baku, this is the shame and disgrace of the Armenian people. They are in Baku also as a result of the actions of this government. Armenia’s current ruling regime bears direct complicity in the depopulation of Artsakh, in ethnic cleansing, in genocide, and in the issue of the POWs in Baku. They have not dealt with this issue and continue not to deal with it.
“Azerbaijani troops are on the territory of Armenia, while our prisoners of war are in Baku’s prisons, and look at the level of their villainy: they say, ‘Hajiyev conveyed to us that we should go and tell the Armenian people there will be no war, there are no territorial claims.’ First withdraw your troops from the territory of Armenia—why are you not withdrawing them?”
More details in the video.
