As the next crisis erupts in the Middle East, a ray of hope has begun to appear in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have been in conflict for almost three decades, are today closer than ever to signing a peace treaty.
Oku.AzAccording to information from “Manara Magazine”, this is stated in the article dedicated to the Middle East.
The author recalls that the anniversary of the attack on Israel by the radical Palestinian movement Hamas on October 7 of last year is approaching.
“The war that followed plunged the region into chaos and killed more than 40,000 people, most of them Palestinians. Now Israel has turned its attention to the north. The region is on the brink of a full-scale war after the explosions on the electronic devices of members of the Shiite group Hezbollah and Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.
The deepening crisis in the Middle East stands in stark contrast to ongoing peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia, some 1,000 miles away. The two countries have been at war for almost thirty years over Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. But the situation has changed radically in just a few years. “After the 44 days of the Second Karabakh War in the fall of 2020 and the swift anti-terrorist operation on September 19-20, 2023, Azerbaijan liberated all its territories occupied by Armenia,” the article says.
Later, the journalist points out Armenia’s distance from Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), its non-intervention in the conflict on Armenia’s side, as well as the fact that the republic abandoned the organization and development of relations with the West. .
“However, Armenia maintains on its territory the 102nd Russian military base in the northwest of Gyumri, under the command of the Southern Military District of the Russian Armed Forces,” he added.
“Thanks to the notable changes mentioned above, peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is closer than ever. After 30 years of conflict and confrontation, negotiations on the draft bilateral peace agreement, which will normalize relations between the two countries, They are almost finished.
On August 30, both sides announced the signing of the regulations of the joint border commission on border delimitation and demarcation. In May this year, the two sides began talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to reach a lasting solution. It is noteworthy that this time there was no participation from Russia, the United States or Europe, and the discussions were held directly in a bilateral format. After the meeting in Almaty, Armenia returned to Azerbaijan four villages located along the border and uninhabited since the fighting of the 1990s, but occupied by Yerevan,” the article says.
However, the author adds that there are still serious issues to be resolved. Armenia’s first and most basic claim against Azerbaijan is the territorial claim, the article of Armenia’s Constitution that includes “unification” with Karabakh, which is Azerbaijan’s territory and was occupied by Armenia for thirty years.
The preamble to Armenia’s current constitution refers to the “national aspirations” of ethnic Armenians, as well as the 1990 Declaration of Independence, which provided for the unification of the former Autonomous Province of Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Soviet Azerbaijan, with Armenia. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said that this clause constitutes an obvious territorial threat to Azerbaijan” and that a peace agreement is impossible as long as it exists.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he is ready to update the constitution and tasked the new Constitutional Reform Council with preparing changes to be put to the referendum. However, no progress has been made in this direction,” the publication notes.
On August 31, Pashinyan announced that his government had made an official offer to Azerbaijan to sign a peace treaty. “We have 17 articles in the latest draft of the peace agreement. 13 of them, including the preamble, have been fully agreed upon,” he said. However, Azerbaijan rejected this proposal and insisted that Armenia renounce its territorial claims contained in the constitution as a main condition for signing the peace treaty.
The author then quotes the words of Aykhan Hajizadeh, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan:
“The call of Armenian officials to sign the draft “peace agreement” with the elimination of unagreed provisions and attempts to bring the solution of existing problems in bilateral relations to the next stage are unacceptable.”
According to the journalist, the second important issue is the demarcation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“The Joint Border Commission sometimes tries to find a compromise based on different Soviet maps that give contradictory interpretations of the border line. Other republics of the former USSR signed similar agreements in the 1990s to recognize Soviet borders as international borders,” he writes. . .
Another point is the restoration of the Zangezur Corridor, a closed 43 km long transit route through Armenia, connecting Nakhchivan and most of Azerbaijan between Iran, Armenia and Turkey.
“This is an important issue for Azerbaijan, because the country is trying to restore rail and road connections between the two parts of its territory. Such a transport corridor will allow Baku to avoid using Iranian territory and airspace to access Nakhchivan, thus ending the multiplicity Although Armenia recognizes all the advantages of eliminating the economic isolation of the region by opening the borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, it resists.
Finally, the issue of international safeguards and dispute settlement mechanisms to ensure the long-term sustainability of the bilateral agreement remains unresolved. For now, in accordance with the Tripartite Declaration of the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia of November 10, 2020, Armenia has entrusted the role of security provider to the border guards of the Russian Federal Security Service. At the same time, Azerbaijan opposes the European Union monitoring mission deployed to Armenia in 2022 to observe the situation on the conditional border and believes that this increases the risk of conflict. “Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Hikmet Hajiyev, confirmed that progress has been made in bilateral negotiations and added that the agreement on the border commission should be considered sufficient for the withdrawal of the EU quota,” the article said.
The author believes that 30 years after the First Karabakh War in 1994, a “golden” window of opportunity has opened, as both sides are ready to move on.
“This is a positive development that the West, facing two wars on Europe’s eastern and southern flanks, should welcome. However, rather than being impartial, Europeans seem more inclined to side with the Prime Minister. Minister Pashinyan due to his pro-European stance. This position has undermined the reputation of the European Union as an honest mediator in the eyes of Azerbaijan. This is why bilateral negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia are so important. foreigners is that no external plan or ambition can prevent an agreement.
This approach has already produced significant positive results. A peace agreement between the two countries and the subsequent restoration of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Türkiye can have positive results beyond the Caucasus.
For example, in recent years there has been an increase in relations between the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf and Central Asia. Peace in the Caucasus and new transit routes such as the Zangezur Corridor could improve trade links between the Gulf and Central Asia.
Normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia will be a win-win option for all stakeholders in the Caucasus. This is likely to attract billions of dollars of foreign investment to the region. But the most important thing is that it can serve as an example to the leaders of a Middle East ravaged by conflict, that even after decades of conflict it is possible to achieve peace for the benefit of all,” the material emphasizes.
