YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to disagree on key terms of a bilateral peace treaty discussed by them, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Friday.
The two sides have exchanged in recent months written proposals regarding the treaty which Baku hopes will help to restore full Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Few of their details have been made public so far.
“There have been discussions, exchanges of views and some compromise language has been defined,” Mirzoyan told Armenian lawmakers. “Unfortunately, this does not apply to major, key issues of primary importance.”
“All those major issues of primary importance are still under discussion and the parties are quite far apart on the bulk of them,” he said without elaborating.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonyan similarly said late last month that Yerevan and Baku still disagree on “three or four” elements of the would-be peace treaty. But he too did not disclose them.
Baku maintains that the peace accord must be based on five elements which it presented to Yerevan in March 2022. Those elements include mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity. This would presumably mean Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
Armenia’s leaders have been vague on such recognition in their public statements. They have said only that the treaty should address the “rights and security” of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population.
The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, said earlier this month that Yerevan is seeking relevant security guarantees for the Karabakh Armenians. This may include the establishment of a “demilitarized zone” around Karabakh or “international presence” in the Armenian-populated territory, he said.
