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Become a memberArmenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan has rejected Azerbaijani preconditions for the signing of a peace agreement, which were announced shortly after the two countries agreed to the terms of the deal.
‘We have never accepted their legitimacy or considered them part of the agenda’, Mirzoyan said of the preconditions in parliament on Friday.
‘We have never negotiated on them. There was an exchange of views — they stated their demand, and we stated ours, and we do not accept your demand’.
On 13 March, both Azerbaijan and Armenia separately announced that negotiations to a peace deal had been concluded. On the same evening, however, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry named amendments to Armenia’s constitution and the dissolution of the ‘obsolete and dysfunctional’ OSCE Minsk Group as preconditions to signing the deal, thereby negating the progress made to finally signing a historic deal.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
‘We remain hopeful and ready to proceed with signing. [...] Unfortunately, parallel preconditions are being introduced. We need to work and find a solution’, Mirzoyan said, adding that the sides did agree to hold a meeting anytime ‘in the near future’.
The terms of the deal have not yet been made public. It is known that it consists of 17 articles, the two of which remained unresolved until mid-March.
Mirzoyan considered the draft text ‘a very important milestone, [...] a basis for continuing our work towards a comprehensive settlement’.
‘We have significant achievements and records in the agreement’, Mirzoyan said, specifically naming ‘mutual recognition of territorial integrity, the inviolability of borders’. Another named example was regarding ‘avoiding the use of force and the threat of use of force is’, which he stated was, ‘of course, prohibited by the agreement’.
He said that the agreement ‘envisages mechanisms’ through which the two sides can solve any issues for the final settlement of relations.
Talking about the issues not included in the text, Mirzoyan named the Armenian Constitution, and underscored that the agreed text ‘does not contain any unilateral regulation’.
After being pressed by an opposition MP, Kristine Vardanyan, on what Azerbaijan conceded on the face of Armenia’s multiple concessions, Mirzoyan avoided naming any such concessions, only saying that ‘when speaking about such kind of issues that are fatal for states, it is probably not appropriate to measure by the number of demands’.
Instead, Mirzoyan said that ‘with the establishment of peace with this text, Armenia will emerge from a large and deep swamp, from which, if we do not emerge, we will sink and be buried’.
He said it had no provision on the return of refugees, or on a ‘so-called corridor’.
He also noted that ‘the resolution of humanitarian issues’, primarily the release of Armenians imprisoned in Azerbaijan, ‘is a very important component for a comprehensive settlement’.
The two sticking points were ‘exclusion of third-party forces’ on the Armenia–Azerbaijan interstate border, a reference to the removal of EU monitors (EUMA), and the dropping of lawsuits in international venues.
Armenia opposed both, underscoring the importance of the EUMA in bringing stability to the region, though they did agree to withdraw them only from the delimited areas, which apparently was rejected by Azerbaijan.
Mirzoyan said Yerevan will discuss ‘acceptable and mutually beneficial agreements’ with the EU regarding the activities of the EUMA after the signing and subsequent ratification of the peace treaty with Azerbaijan.
‘At the same time, when the agreement [peace treaty] is signed and ratified and takes effect, naturally, peace and stability will become very institutional along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border’, Mirzoyan said.
In regards to the second sticking point, Mirzoyan said that when the treaty ‘will take effect, when the sides will withdraw the lawsuits, at the same time the two sides will assume obligation to not file lawsuits against each other in the future around the issues that had existed between the sides prior to signing the treaty’.‘It is assumed that in all disputes that we now have the sides must reconcile’, Mirzoyan said.
Armenia and Azerbaijan recently agreed to a peace deal, with sources stating that an Armenian concession is the dropping of international lawsuits.
The overtures from the US follow Armenia and Azerbaijan agreeing to sign a historic peace treaty.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made his comments during an exclusive interview with Euronews.
This past week has seen unprecedented steps toward the end of a decades-long conflict.
