Azerbaijan has reportedly agreed to withdraw their demand for a ‘Zangezur Corridor’ through southern Armenia from a peace agreement with Armenia, removing a major roadblock to the signing of a treaty.

Elchin Amirbayov, Aliyev’s senior envoy for special assignments, told RFE/RL that Azerbaijan and Armenia had agreed to put off the arrangement of the transportation routes. The Armenian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

‘On mutual agreement, we decided to take this paragraph out of the peace agreement and to refer it to a later stage’, Amirbayov was cited as saying. 

‘I don’t want to complicate even further the task of finalising the peace agreement. So, we decided to take it out of the text, but we can still reflect in the text [on] the fact that this is one of the other issues on which the countries may come back at some point to discuss and to come to a common agreement.’

The establishment of a corridor under Russian control connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan was part of the ceasefire agreement that brought an end to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. Azerbaijan went on to violate the treaty by placing Nagorno-Karabakh under blockade in late 2022 and subsequently taking the territory back by force in 2023.

Since then, Azerbaijani officials have repeatedly demanded the corridor through southern Armenia, even threatening to take it by force. Armenian officials have expressed opposition to the proposal. 

Azerbaijan and Turkey resumed discussions of the ‘Zangezur Corridor’ at the beginning of the year despite Iran and Azerbaijan beginning the construction of an alternative route through Iran in late 2023. 

[Read more: Azerbaijan begins construction of corridor to Nakhchivan through Iran]

Amirbayov told RFE/RL that the decision to drop mentions of the corridor would ease the peace treaty negotiations with Armenia, adding that Armenia’s constitution was ‘pretty much the only obstacle to further progress in the peace process’.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in May issued a decree to draft a new constitution by December 2026, as Azerbaijani officials, including President Ilham Aliyev, repeatedly stated that a peace treaty would be impossible with Armenia’s current constitution.

Read in Russian on Jnews.