Azerbaijan invites Armenia to agree on the basic principles of good neighborly relations even before concluding a full-scale peace treaty, Reuters reports.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Saturday that the text of the treaty was 80-90 per cent ready, but reiterated that it could not be signed before Armenia amends its constitution to remove an implicit reference to Karabakh’s independence, which Armenia has rejected.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have repeatedly said they want to sign a peace treaty to end the conflict over the former breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Karabakh’s ethnic Armenians enjoyed de facto independence from Azerbaijan for more than three decades until September 2023, when Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive retook the territory and forced some 100,000 Armenians to flee.
Towards a peace treaty
In recent months, the two countries have tried to make progress on a peace treaty, including border demarcation, with Armenia agreeing to hand over four disputed border villages to Azerbaijan.
The document on basic principles could be seen as a temporary measure and become the basis for bilateral ties and ensuring good neighbourly relations between the two countries, presidential foreign policy adviser Hikmet Hajiyev told Reuters.
The agreement could be signed before Azerbaijan hosts the COP29 climate summit in November, Hajiyev added.
In June, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that work on a peace treaty with Azerbaijan was close to completion, but his country would not accept Azerbaijan’s demand to change its constitution. His statement was followed by clashes between police and demonstrators, the latest in a series of protests condemning his policies, including the transfer of destroyed villages to Azerbaijan, and demanding his resignation.
On July 5, Armenia’s Constitution Day, Pashinyan said the country needed a new constitution “that the people will consider what they created, what they accepted, what is written in it – it is their idea of the state they created and the relations between people and citizens in this state.”
