Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said Azerbaijan lacks the “political will” to sign a peace deal with Armenia and may be planning further military action against it. He made these remarks on October 2, on the sidelines of the Warsaw Security Forum. This came one week after meeting Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister in Washington D.C.
Mirzoyan complained about Baku’s repeated rejections of Armenia’s proposal to sign an interim peace treaty that would leave out the few differences remaining between the two sides.
“Imagine, we have a situation when we have almost completed and finalized the text of the peace treaty, there is the draft but we don’t sign it. The Azerbaijani side is reluctant to sign this peace document, peace agreement for some reasons. For some calculations they come up with new and new preconditions each time and we see that they don’t want to sign the document. This time they say that there are more things that could be agreed but we believe that there is no single agreement in the world between any two countries that regulates all the aspects, all the spheres of their relations, meanwhile we can sign this very serious document and then continue negotiating the remaining issues. We don’t see this political will from Azerbaijani side,” said FM Mirzoyan.
He added, “There are serious concerns that Azerbaijan has further military plans regarding Armenia, towards Armenia’s territories. I can bring an example, now Azerbaijani side uses the narrative of ‘Western Azerbaijan’ which you know basically coincides with almost the whole territory of the Republic of Armenia. They assure us that this is not a territorial claim but unfortunately the impression is completely different.”
Mirzoyan stated, “Unfortunately, I cannot give confidence because I’m not confident about the peaceful plans of Azerbaijan.”
Mirzoyan noted that despite the challenges posed by escalations and attacks on Armenian territory over the past few years, Armenia has remained constructive in negotiations. He highlighted a key success, the recent adoption of the first-ever legal document between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This agreement regulates the joint work of their respective border commissions, which are responsible for the delimitation of the border between the two countries. The process is based on the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991, which recognized the former administrative borders of Soviet republics as international borders. This agreement provides a solid foundation for the ongoing delimitation process.
