Yerevan and Baku agree on mutual recognition of territorial integrity

Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on mutual recognition of territorial integrity, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Eurasian Economic Union summit on Thursday.

“On this basis we are making good progress in regulating our relations,” said the politician.

At the same time, he recalled the issue of the rights and security of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh within the international mechanism.

“I hope that normal, constructive dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert will start soon,” Pashinyan said.

Stepanakert is the capital of the internationally unrecognized (and also by Armenia) breakaway Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), whose affiliation with Azerbaijan Pashinyan apparently recognized with his declaration.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev added that his country has no territorial claims to Armenia.

“Baku and Yerevan have an opportunity to conclude a peace agreement, especially since Armenia officially recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan,” the President of Azerbaijan stressed.

Aliyev noted that there are serious preconditions for the normalization of relations based on mutual recognition of territorial integrity.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed hope that the trilateral meeting with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan can resolve all contradictions:

“I hope that we will manage to agree on what is clearly in the sphere of economic development interests for both Azerbaijan and Armenia and the region as a whole. I believe that in the trilateral format we will have time, this to discuss in detail.”

The Russian head of state stressed the importance of a fundamental agreement between the parties on territorial integrity. According to him, an agreement on this point can be the basis for a consensus on other issues, which are secondary but also important.

Pashinyan: Armenia ready to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan

Putin will hold two bilateral meetings with Aliyev and Pashinyan today, followed by trilateral talks.

Nagorno-Karabakh, which in Soviet times had the status of an autonomous region within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, broke away from the meanwhile independent Azerbaijan in the early 1990s in the course of Armenian-Azerbaijani ethnic clashes and since then has been striving for independence or union with Armenia at. During the first Karabakh war from 1992 to 1994, the rebels also managed to occupy some of the surrounding districts with an Azeri majority, most of whom fled.

In the course of the second Karabakh war in autumn 2020, Baku succeeded in recapturing these districts and part of Nagorno-Karabakh. With the mediation of Moscow, the conflicting parties had agreed on the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops, but a final peace solution was not reached at the time.

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