Pashinyan slams Biden-era U.S. official

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has reacted to James O’Brien, who served as assistant secretary of state in the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, who claimed in an article that the Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements signed in Washington will give Armenia no “substantial peace dividend” and not necessarily end the conflict with Azerbaijan, as well as leave Armenia vulnerable.

1news.media informs, citing Armenpress, the former American official also described the deal as a major win for Azerbaijan.

Asked to comment, Pashinyan said at a press briefing that James O’Brien lost his job during the tenure of U.S. President Donald Trump and now needs to try to explain why the Trump Administration was able to do something the Biden Administration couldn’t.

“From this point of view O’Brien’s remarks are very strange, but on the other hand not strange at all,” Pashinyan said. “If Mr. O’Brien is talking about Armenia’s vulnerabilities, I have to state that unfortunately Armenia was most vulnerable during his and their tenure. I’d like to remind you about the events of 2023, the events of 2022, the events of 2021. And I have to say that we had never been satisfied with the reaction and work that the then-U.S. administration had carried out in our region to support the peace process. Mr. O’Brien is someone who lost his job as a result of this all, and I am not going to comment on his emotional assessments. If he has lost his job, he needs to self-reflect and not try to put the blame for losing his job on Armenia. Today, Armenia is in the least vulnerable state of its modern independent history. We’ve never been less vulnerable since 1991. And perhaps it was the lack of skills to notice geopolitical, regional and political nuances that didn’t allow Mr. O’Brien to continue his career at the U.S. State Department,” Pashinyan said.