Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had asked him for a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2018 in a bid to avert a spillover of the Armenian velvet revolution to Azerbaijan
YEREVAN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th September, 2020) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had asked him for a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2018 in a bid to avert a spillover of the Armenian velvet revolution to Azerbaijan.
Last week, Aliyev claimed that he had rejected a ceasefire proposal, put forward by Pashinyan, during a meeting in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe on the sidelines of the 2018 summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders.
"It is alleged that it was me who asked for a ceasefire ... The truth is, the Azerbaijani president asked me for a ceasefire, not the other way around," Pashinyan told the Armenian public television in an interview, recorded before the onset of the military action in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 2018, Pashinyan ignited a nationwide Armenian protest that toppled the old government and brought him to power � events that are largely referred to as a "velvet revolution." During his public addresses of this period, Pashinyan occasionally referenced the poor democratic standards in neighboring Azerbaijan, which he now recalled in the interview.
"Ilham Aliyev's interest to conclude a [ceasefire] agreement [in Dushanbe] pursued to make me refrain from making such statements about Azerbaijan. Why? For a very simple reason. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the entire world was inspired by it and the opposition forces in our region were inspired by it. There were unceasing discussions in the Azerbaijani social media that this waive would soon reach Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan's military-political leadership feared that these phenomena might ignite certain political processes in their country as well," Pashinyan said.
The Armenian prime minister said he had not revealed the details of the Dushanbe conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart earlier out of ethical considerations, but decided to break the silence amid what he described as Aliyev's "odd behavior."
Tensions escalated in the Armenian-majority self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) on Sunday morning as Azerbaijan launched what it described as a "counteroffensive" along the entire contact line, including against civilian settlements. Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia consider this to be the escalation's starting point.
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh declared martial law and general mobilization, while Azerbaijan declared partial martial law and partial mobilization. Azerbaijan has shut down its airports to all international air traffic except for Turkey, which has pledged full solidarity with Baku.
The military action is still underway. Both sides have reported casualties, including among the civilian population.
