One of the leaders of Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanian bloc, Armenia’s former foreign minister Vartan Oskanian has refuted and slammed remarks by ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan on the “Meghri option” of Karabakh settlement.

In a TV interview, Ter-Petrosyan suggested that the option of ceding the southern Armenian town of Meghri to Azerbaijan in exchange for the independence of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) has been discussed at a Key West, Florida meeting of then presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Robert Kocharyan and Heidar Aliyev, in 2001.

“I regret that the country's founding president trying to cash in on the issue,” Oskanian said in an interview on Kentron TV.

“No such thing has, can or will ever happen. There was this proposal by Paul Goble in the 1990s but our authorities have never taken the plan seriously.”

According to Oskanian, during his tenure as foreign minister Armenia managed to include the point on the Nagorno Karabakh people's right to self-determination in the negotiation document, which went on to be approved by the international community.

Earlier, head of the 2nd Armenian president’s office Viktor Soghomonyan described Ter-Petrosyan’s remarks as slander and distortion of history.