A peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible by the end of the year. Yerevan is taking all necessary steps to this end, said the head of the Armenian government, Nikol Pashinyan, quoted by the Russian state agency TASS.
Nikol Pashinyan stipulated that no joint documents would be signed during his meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The two leaders are scheduled to meet on October 5 in Granada, on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit.
– We devote a lot of time to the closure of the Lachin Corridor and the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. This energy and time should have been spent on working on a peace treaty, Pashinyan said. – I believe it is possible to sign a peace agreement before the end of the year because I have made a political commitment to sign such an agreement, he added.
SEE ALSO: Armenia “ready to recognize” Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. However, there is a condition
“War trophy park” in Baku. “Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” says the inscription on the banner MAXIM SHIPENKOV/EPA/PAP
Agreement reached
On September 9, Armenia and Azerbaijan managed to reach an agreement on unblocking the Lachin Corridor – the only road connecting the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Earlier, this corridor was blocked as a result of Azerbaijan’s actions, which increased tensions between Yerevan and Baku.
The blockade has also led to a serious humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. This enclave in Azerbaijan, inhabited mainly by Armenians, which 30 years ago declared independence unrecognized by the world, is the subject of one of the longest and most tragic territorial disputes in the former Soviet Union.
Russian troops on posts in Nagorno-KarabakhMinistry of Defense of Russia
The idea of creating a demilitarized zone
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan announced at the end of May this year that they had agreed to recognize the territorial integrity of both countries. The condition for recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory is to ensure the security of the Armenian population there.
Pashinyan said then that there was an idea to create a demilitarized zone along the border of the two countries. He also assessed that the issue of security and rights of the enclave’s inhabitants should be discussed in the Baku-Stepanakert format (the largest city and informal capital of Nagorno-Karabakh), and international guarantees would be a desirable element in resolving the dispute.
Conflict in Nagorno-KarabakhPAP/Maciej Zieliński, Adam Ziemienowicz
Main photo source: MAXIM SHIPENKOV/EPA/PAP