Opposition MP: Until October 6, 2022, no Armenia authorities recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan

Until October 6, 2022, no official representative of Armenia has recognized, with any document or verbal statement, Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Opposition MP Artsvik Minasyan announced this during Monday’s debates, at the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly of Armenia, on the bill submitted by the HayaKve public and political initiative—and addressing the lawmakers from the ruling majority Civil Contract Faction. According to Minasyan, the assurances that Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev "allegedly wanted something there at the negotiating table" and that the official representatives of Armenia started discussing these matters for some reason are absurd. "There is no document that can be referenced—starting from 1990 to today," said the opposition MP. He noted that the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan should not have had and does not have anything in common with the right to self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh even before the Civil Contract Party came to power in Armenia. The law amendments proposed by the HayaKve initiative call for criminalization of recognizing—on behalf of Armenia—Nagorno-Karabakh as part of another country, as well as refusing international recognition of the Armenian Genocide or belittling its danger.