Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed his hopes to sign a peace deal and normalize ties with Azerbaijan, following Baku’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh and the ethnic Armenian exodus from the region in September.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Thursday he hopes to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months, weeks after Baku recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic-Armenian separatists.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh saw a significant military offensive by Azerbaijan against the self-proclaimed independent entity of Artsakh in September 2023. The ceasefire, brokered with Russian peacekeepers’ mediation, aimed to prevent further escalation of the conflict, which had resulted in numerous casualties in just 24 hours. The longstanding dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh involves historical, ethnic and territorial complexities, and the situation has seen periods of intense fighting and ceasefire agreements over the years.
Following the conflict, the majority of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who had been living there fled to Armenia.
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“We are currently working on the draft agreement with Azerbaijan on peace and the normalization of relations, and I hope this process will successfully conclude in the coming months,” Pashinyan said in an address to an international economic forum in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. He said the future peace treaty will be based on the mutual recognition of the Caucasus neighbors’ Soviet-era borders.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has previously said that a peace treaty with Yerevan could be signed by the end of the year.
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Pashinyan also said Thursday he hoped the border between Armenia and Turkey could be opened for citizens of third countries and diplomats. Ankara closed its border with Armenia in the 1990s in solidarity with ally Azerbaijan.
In 2020 and the 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars to control Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but home to a majority ethnic-Armenian population. Internationally mediated peace talks between the ex-Soviet republics have failed to produce a breakthrough.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
