Edmon Marukyan, leader of the Bright Armenia party, commented on the recently signed declaration in Washington, arguing that it is being presented as a trilateral agreement when, in fact, it concerns only Armenia and Azerbaijan.
According to him, “we are being deceived once again” because U.S. President Donald Trump signed the document as a witness, not as a party or guarantor.
“Our authorities and their loyal political and public figures present the Washington declaration as a trilateral document that implies trilateral obligations. Naturally, we are being deceived again.
In reality, the declaration signed in Washington is bilateral, signed between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, while U.S. President Donald Trump signed as a witness — not a party, not a guarantor, but a witness.
To prove my point, I present the official English version of the document, where next to the U.S. President’s name is the wording ‘Witnessed by.’ In the Armenian version on the same page of the Government’s website, this note is absent — for obvious reasons…
First, let’s not deceive our people — let’s say what is actually there. I am also convinced that if we had proper negotiators, we would have signed a bilateral declaration with the U.S. and not made Azerbaijan a stakeholder in the corridor.
We can have a bilateral declaration with the U.S., but only after a change of power,” he wrote.
On August 8, at the White House, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a Joint Declaration following their trilateral meeting. In Washington, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, in the presence of the leaders, preliminarily signed the “Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.”
