Armenia and Azerbaijan agree to recognise their borders

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to recognise their territorial borders, RIA Novosti reports.

"I want to confirm that Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on the mutual recognition of each other's territorial integrity, and on this basis, we can say that we are moving quite well towards the settlement of our relations,” he said.

The prime minister of Armenia also set out a hope for a constructive dialogue between Baku and Stepanakert (the capital of the unrecognised Nagorno Karabakh Republic — ed.) to ensure the rights and security of Nagorno Karabakh residents within the framework of the international mechanism.

There are serious prerequisites for the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia to improve and normalise as long as the countries officially agree to recognise each other's territorial integrity, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.

According to Aliyev, Azerbaijan has no territorial claims against Armenia today. Therefore, the two countries may sign a peace treaty.

"There is an opportunity to reach a peace agreement, given that Armenia has recognised Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan,” the president said.

On April 18, Pashinyan announced that Armenia would recognise the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within the borders of the Soviet era. During his report to the parliament, he said that peace in the region could be possible only if Yerevan could legally acknowledge its territory as 29.8 thousand square kilometres of the Armenian SSR, within the borders of which the republic gained independence in 1991.

Armenian opposition movement accused Pashinyan of giving up on Nagorno Karabakh. The disputed region was part of the Azerbaijan SSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was recognised as part of Azerbaijan. After the end of the first Karabakh war in 1994, the region came under Armenia's control. Armenia supported the independence of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh Republic, but did not legally recognise it as such.

Negotiations on a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been going on for several years. In 2020, the Azerbaijani army occupied a number of large cities in the unrecognised republic, including the city of Shushi. In November 2020, the parties, through the mediation of Russia, managed to conclude a ceasefire agreement, and a Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed on the demarcation line.

The status of Nagorno Karabakh remained unsettled, and the parties repeatedly accused each other of shelling. In January of 2023, Azerbaijan conveyed its proposals to Armenia for a peace agreement and expressed readiness to resume negotiations as soon as possible.

Also read: Nagorno Karabakh: 20,000 killed, but no one is interested