Kocharyan: Peace in the South Caucasus cannot depend on the goodwill  of one person; peace should have guarantors

ArmInfo. Peace in the South Caucasus region cannot depend on the goodwill of one person; peace should have guarantors, as stated by Robert Kocharyan, the second president of Armenia and leader of the "Armenia" bloc, on the "Big Politics" podcast. He was commenting on the "war or peace" thesis promoted by the ruling political force, the "Civil Contract".

According to him, any peace should have guarantors. "It just can't  work that way. Peace in our region cannot depend on the goodwill of  one person," the politician said. He cited the situation around  Cyprus and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as clear examples of  this. He recalled that Israel and Palestine signed the Oslo Accords  in Washington in 1993, and implementation began quite successfully,  but there were no guarantees that the agreements would be fulfilled.  After several years, the process stalled,  resulting in a devastated  Gaza Strip and over 70,000 innocent victims.

"Now we have some kind of peace awards, but there are no guarantees.  Do you see the coincidences?  Another example is Cyprus: in 1974, a  war broke out and was stopped. To this day, there is no formal peace  agreement, but there are serious guarantors for peace, and  peace  continues to exists. There is no peace treaty, but there is genuine  peace on the ground with guarantors," he noted. Kocharyan emphasized  that the political force he leads desires both a peace treaty and  those who guarantee it. 

Touching on the situation in Artsakh, where Russian peacekeepers were  deployed in 2020, and what the current Armenian authorities are  citing to justify their rejection of the institution of guarantors,  the politician stated that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic primarily  had security guarantees from Armenia, which was the first to abandon  these functions. "The Republic of Armenia, one of the parties that  signed the agreement of November 9, 2020, abandoned its functions as  a guarantor of peace and blames Russia. It was Armenia that nullified  Russia's role as a mediator. Russia had two functions: first, it  mediated the end of the war, and then it became a guarantor of peace.  And this is problematic, since the functions of mediator and  guarantor overlap. And when Armenia, as a guarantor, withdrew from  these negotiations, the entire structure collapsed," the head of the  largest opposition force in Armenia asserted. According to him,  Aliyev could leave tomorrow, and there is not a single guarantor, not  a single document that would ensure continued peace in the region.

"We shouldn't think that we're the only ones who need guarantors. How  do they call us? Revanchists and so on? We need to understand that  peace guarantees also restrain revanchists. This applies to both  sides in the conflict. This is a fundamental question. What does  Aliyev says: 'He says, remove this, that, and the other from the  Constitution so that we understand that the Armenian people want  peace.' However, why doesn't Aliyev need guarantors?" Kocharyan  asked.

The politician expressed his conviction that the issue shouldn't be  approached from the perspective that only Armenia needs guarantors,  since tomorrow Pashinyan will be gone and things could turn out  differently. The second president of Armenia noted that for long-term  peace, guarantors are needed for both Yerevan and Baku. "I understand  why Nikol Pashinyan doesn't need guarantors, since without them,  Pashinyan's name won't be directly linked to the world. He wants the  situation in Armenian society to be perceived from the perspective of  'if there's no Nikol, there will be no peace, there will be war.' But  we need a peace that isn't tied to personalities," Kocharyan stated.

When asked who he sees as  a guarantor in the current reality,  especially when interests clash between different poles, the  politician stated that the Armenian authorities haven't even offered  such a role to the US, because they don't need it. However, he is  confident that the US and Russia could cooperate on this issue, since  it isn't an existential one for them. "Pashinyan doesn't need a  long-term peace; he needs a formal peace that would be exclusively  tied to his name," the politician concluded.