Armenia PM says peace deal with Azerbaijan imminent

Yerevan (AFP): Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Thursday he hopes to sign a peace agreement with arch-foe Azerbaijan in the coming months, weeks after Baku recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic-Armenian separatists.

Yerevan and Baku have been locked in a decades-long conflict for control of Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Baku took control of the mountainous region in September in a lightning 24-hour offensive that ended decades of pro-Armenian separatist rule.

“We are currently working on the draft agreement with Azerbaijan on peace and the normalisation 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 neighbours’ Soviet-era borders.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said previously that a peace treaty with Yerevan could be signed by the end of the year.

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 in the 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars for control of Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but home to a majority ethnic-Armenian population.

Internationally mediated peace talks between the ex-Soviet republics have so far failed to produce a breakthrough.

Almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population — some 100,000 people — fled for Armenia after Baku’s offensive, sparking a refugee crisis.