I have confidence that we can, to restore the territory of Karabakh [(Artsakh)], at least to the extent of the former NKAO, through negotiations. The second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, stated this during a talk with his supporters.
"The Shahumyan region has always been on the negotiating table in my time [in power]; but in fact, we controlled the territory of the former NKAO and seven Azerbaijani regions. We are talking about Shushi and Hadrut [regions] first of all. I see an opportunity here. Otherwise, the legal recognition of the results of the [recent Artsakh] war is also seen by the international community as a weak argument and not a good one. It is the same as we were to after the 1992-1994 war, ‘We have resolved the issue, we are not negotiating.’ In fact, it was said and because of that the war was provoked. We said [in the words of acting PM Nikol Pashinyan] that ‘Karabakh is Armenia and that's that!’ In addition, a number of plans were announced in the south and we brought the negotiation process to a deadlock, and the adversary did not find any other way to resolve the issue than war.
In order to prevent all this from happening in the opposite way, we have sufficient grounds to try to resolve the issue of Shushi and Hadrut through legal, negotiated means. Here we have grounds to push this issue forward," Kocharyan stated.
