Azerbaijan is setting “ridiculous” conditions to avoid signing an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty that is “not going to be fair” to Armenia, said Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during a hearing organized in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a congressional federal agency that monitors human rights, reports Azatutyun.
Cardin, who commented on the draft treaty being discussed by Baku and Yerevan, stated: “If I understand it, they’re not even talking about taking care of Nagorno-Karabakh from the point of view of access by the community that’s been displaced. They’re not even talking about the border issues as far as the areas that are currently under control by Azerbaijan in Armenia. So it’s not really a very fair agreement.”
“With all that being said, my understanding is that Armenia wants to move forward with the agreement because that’s the only way they are going to be able to get their borders opened and get their country economically on the right path,” he added.
Cardin, who co-chairs the Helsinki Commission alongside Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, also suggested that the agreement is unlikely to be signed soon because Baku is demanding a change to Armenia’s constitution, which it claims contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
“Azerbaijan is insisting on constitutional changes in Armenia, which is ridiculous,” said the Maryland Democrat. “This is a ridiculous requirement that they are asking for. It’s not needed, and it’s really something we believe is to delay or eliminate the agreement.”
On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reaffirmed that precondition when it rejected Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recent offer to sign an interim peace deal, leaving out the few remaining contentious points. The ministry stated that Yerevan’s insistence on “excluding non-agreed points from the draft treaty” is “unacceptable” to Baku.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Pashinyan continued to reiterate his proposal. He told the Armenian parliament that the signed document would contain 16 of the 17 articles of the draft treaty, on which both sides fully or mostly agree. However, he did not elaborate on those provisions.
“Whatever the agreement is, it still won’t answer all the important questions,” said Pashinyan, responding to Baku’s objections.
Armenian opposition leaders claim that Pashinyan is desperate to sign such a document in hopes of misleading Armenians and increasing his chances of holding on to power. Like Cardin, they argue that it says nothing about Artsakh and does not require Azerbaijan to withdraw from the Armenian border areas it occupied in 2021-2022.
