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Azerbaijan and Armenia have successfully wrapped up peace talks aimed at resolving their decades-long conflict.
The foreign ministries of the Caucasus neighbours say a peace treaty has been agreed in what would be in a breakthrough in a region where Russia, the EU, the US and Turkey all jostle for influence.
Two wars were fought for control of Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh – at the end of the Soviet Union and in 2020 – before Azerbaijan seized the territory in September 2023.
Both countries had repeatedly said a comprehensive peace deal to end their longstanding animosity was within reach but officials failed to reach consensus on a draft agreement.
“The negotiation process on the text of the peace agreement with Armenia has been concluded,” said Jeyhun Bayramov, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister. “Armenia has accepted Azerbaijan’s proposals on the two previously unresolved articles of the peace treaty.”
Armenia’s foreign ministry later issued a statement saying: “Negotiations on the draft agreement have been concluded – the peace agreement is ready for signing.”
In a hint at the enduring tensions, Armenia criticised Azerbaijan for making a statement unilaterally rather than issuing a joint one. But it said it was ready to start talks on the “dates and location for signing the agreement”.
Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, has recognised Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh after three decades of Armenian separatist rule – a move seen as a crucial first step towards the normalisation of relations. Armenia also last year returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it had seized decades earlier.
Tensions over the conflict have also driven a wedge between Armenia and Russia, with Yerevan having accused Moscow of not doing enough to support it. Armenia last year suspended its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization over the bloc’s failure to come to its aid in the conflict with Azerbaijan.
Russia, the US and the EU have all tried to play a mediating role at various times in the conflict.
In late January, Pashinyan said two out of 17 points in the draft peace agreement remained unresolved. Armenia’s foreign minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, said the same in a speech to parliament on Wednesday.
A key problem was disagreement over the “non-deployment of third-party forces” along the countries’ border, Pashinyan said. He suggested that such deployments should be allowed “in the sections of the border where demarcation has already been carried out”.
There were also disagreements over plans for both sides to withdraw legal cases from international judicial bodies. The two countries remain locked in legal battles in the international court of justice, international criminal court and the European court of human rights over allegations of rights violations committed before, during and after their armed conflicts.
“We need to be certain that we are not only withdrawing the cases from international courts but also renouncing them altogether,” Pashinyan said. “Otherwise, a situation may arise where both sides withdraw their cases from international courts but at the next stage Azerbaijan raises these issues bilaterally, potentially leading to escalation.”
Azerbaijan’s “next expectation from Armenia is constitutional amendments”, said Bayramov. His government wants Armenia to remove from its constitution a reference to its declaration of independence, which asserts territorial claims over Nagorno-Karabakh. Amendments to the constitution would require a referendum.
Nearly all its ethnic Armenian residents – more than 100,000 people – fled Nagorno-Karabakh after it fell to Azerbaijan in a 24-hour offensive.
