Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday that there is still no draft peace agreement ready for signing between Armenia and Azerbaijan
YEREVAN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2023) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday that there is still no draft peace agreement ready for signing between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Last week, media reported, citing Azerbaijani Ambassador to France Leyla Abdullayeva, that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan could sign a peace treaty on June 1 during the European Political Community summit in Chisinau. The leaders will reportedly hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the sidelines of the summit. The Armenian Foreign Ministry said no such meeting was planned.
"We have not yet received any comments from Azerbaijan on our proposals on the peace treaty, which we handed over to them before the meeting in Washington (of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in early May). We gave them a fourth draft of the peace treaty and we have not received any comments yet. Therefore, I cannot say that there is an agreed draft that could be signed," he told the parliament.
Pashinyan added that during the trilateral meeting in Moscow last week, the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia discussed the current crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh and the blockade of the Lachin Corridor.
"I cannot say that the results of this discussion are satisfactory, which is a cause for concern. We will continue the talks with our international partners, including the Russian ones," the prime minister said.
He noted that Aliyev's statements on Sunday were "at the very least incomprehensible," adding that it was necessary to clarify whether they meant that Azerbaijan was ready to cancel the trilateral agreement reached by Pashinyan, Aliyev and European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels.
Aliyev said on Sunday that Azerbaijan is capable of carrying out any operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, and urged the parliament of the unrecognized republic to dissolve, the president to surrender to the Azerbaijani side, and all ministers and lawmakers to leave their posts. Only then could they expect "any kind of amnesty," he said.
The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s. Hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral ceasefire declaration signed in November 2020. The two former Soviet states agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region. Since then, there have been occasional clashes along the border.
On May 17, Pashinyan said that Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other's territorial integrity within Soviet administrative borders. He later said that the 86,600 square kilometers (33,400 square miles) of Azerbaijani territory that Yerevan is willing to recognize also includes the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
