Azerbaijan said Thursday that a consensus has been reached on all articles of the peace agreement with Armenia to resolve the Caucasus neighbors’ decades-long conflict.
“The negotiation process on the text of the peace agreement with Armenia has been concluded,” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov told reporters, adding that, “Armenia has accepted Azerbaijan’s proposals on the two previously unresolved articles of the peace treaty.”
No further details were shared on the specific articles.
However, Azerbaijan has previously said that Armenia must change its constitution to remove indirect references to Karabakh’s “independence” before signing a peace treaty.
On the same day, Azerbaijani presidential adviser Hikmet Hajiyev told reporters: “We believe that resolving issues, especially those related to Armenia’s Constitution, will create better conditions for advancing the peace agenda in the region.”
He also said that Yerevan is “attempting to keep the Minsk Group – an outdated tool with no real function – alive at all costs. There is no need for the Minsk Group today, and it cannot serve any purpose. If anyone attempts to revive it, such ideas would only be utopian.”
Relations between Baku and Yerevan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and seven adjacent regions, including Lachin.
Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a 44-day war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement that opened the door to normalization talks and the demarcation of their border.
After a series of slow-moving negotiations, Azerbaijan rushed in troops last year in September and swiftly seized back Karabakh, whose entire population of nearly 120,000 people returned to Armenia after rejecting a reintegration program Baku offered.
Earlier in 2024, Armenia withdrew from several Azerbaijani villages it had controlled since the early 1990s as part of the peace process.
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