Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said the country needs ‘to try’ to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan and dissolve the OSCE Minsk group by ‘the end of the year’.
Speaking at the GLOBSEC 2025 in Prague on 13 June, Pashinyan touched on Azerbaijan’s preconditions for signing the treaty, saying that one of the prerequisites, the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, was ‘overall an acceptable agenda’ for Armenia.
The OSCE Minsk Group was the main venue for talks between the two sides following the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
He reiterated that in order to dissolve the Minsk Group, the Armenian government must ascertain that Azerbaijan would not press ‘new demands against Armenia’s territory’.
Pashinyan said that some circles in Azerbaijan refer to over 60% of Armenia’s territory as ‘western Azerbaijan’, which he said Armenia perceived as a territorial claim.
‘Western Azerbaijan’ is an irredentist term used by the authorities in Baku to describe the territories in which Azerbaijanis used to live before the conflict with Armenia began.
The dissolution of OSCE Minsk Group, as well as amendments to Armenia’s constitution are the two preconditions pushed by Azerbaijan for signing the peace treaty, after the two countries agreed to the deal’s terms on 13 March.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
Azerbaijan has said that Armenia’s constitution contains territorial claims against its own territory, referring to the constitution’s preamble, which cites Armenia’s declaration of independence. Signed in 1990, the declaration includes a joint decision by the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Karabakh Council to ‘reunify the Armenian SSR and the Mountainous Region of Karabakh’.
In Prague, Pashinyan reiterated that Armenia’s constitution did not contain any territorial claims against Azerbaijan, citing a previous ruling by Armenia’s Constitutional Court.
At the same time, Pashinyan reiterated his readiness to initiate constitutional amendments if Armenia’s Constitutional Court rules that the text of the treaty did not comply with the constitution.
‘We are concentrated, we will try to sign it in June, if we won’t be successful, we will try to do it in July. Repeatedly we will work on that and eventually we will sign the peace agreement, and we will establish peace’, Pashinyan said.
The agreed text was a ‘mutual achievement’ of Armenian and Azerbaijani diplomats, Pashinyan said, adding that the two states had reached a point where ‘we can be sure that there won’t be war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there will be peace’.
Armenpress quoted Pashinyan as saying that the two sides were ‘at the phase of consultations with Azerbaijan to understand how to implement the signature and further ratification’.
Additionally, Pashinyan presented his government’s Crossroads of Peace project, a regional transport proposal that would connect Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Georgia through Armenia.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
‘Expectations from Armenia’
Azerbaijani Presidential Aide Hikmat Hajiyev was also present at the conference, during which he said Azerbaijan ‘ensured security and stability’ in the region but also had an ‘expectation’ from Armenia.
‘Armenia can be an integral part of the comprehensive discussions and corridors held in the region. This is possible. Of course, we also have expectations from Armenia.’
Hajiyev claimed that now they were waiting ‘for the first important step regarding the Zangezur corridor’ — an Azerbaijani proposal to establish a corridor through Armenian territory connecting mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan.
‘The word “corridor” irritates my colleagues in Armenia. Let them say what they want. But first of all, we want a connection with Nakhchivan, because we have been deprived of this opportunity for 30 years. After the connection with Nakhchivan is established, I think other opportunities may open up for Armenia. We also consider Armenia as part of the regional transport’, Hajiyev said.
Hajiyev has also said that Armenia’s constitution posed a ‘concern’ for Azerbaijan and that the OSCE Minsk Group was a ‘relic of history’.
‘We understand that the constitution is an integral part of the political dynamism of any country, but if the constitution contains claims to the territory of another country, this is already a concern’, Hajiyev said, according to APA.
‘The second issue, although not so important, has psychological significance. We are talking about the complete dissolution of the Minsk Group, which is a relic of history. I believe that now is the time to jointly appeal to the OSCE with a request to dissolve the Minsk Group, which is inactive’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
