Is Armenia ready for peace?

Baku/13.04.22/Turan: Armenia accepts 5 settlement principles proposed by Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated on April 13, speaking in the country's parliament. According to him, Armenia is ready to start peace talks, and this position was fixed during the last meeting in Brussels. Further, he made an important remark that if earlier Armenia considered the main issue of the status of Karabakh and security guarantees, now the main issue is the security guarantees for the Armenians of Karabakh.

“In other words, we state that the status in this situation is not a goal, but a means of ensuring the security and rights of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan said.

In turn, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, speaking at a meeting on April 12 in Baku, said that Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and renounces territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

“At the Brussels meeting, I received confirmation that Armenia accepts the 5 principles of the settlement. That is, the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is accepted, and Armenia renounces territorial claims against Azerbaijan. This is a very positive fact and, I think, this is the main condition for the normalization of bilateral ties,” Aliyev said.

Do these statements mean that in the near future the parties will take steps towards concluding a peace treaty? Is Armenia ready for this?

Political commentator Ilham Ismail answers these and other questions in the program "Difficult Question".

According to him, it is difficult to say what will be the results of the talks held on April 6 in Brussels between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

“Nikol Pashinyan, speaking about the position of the international community on the Karabakh issue, noted: “Today the international community tells us to lower our bar on Nagorno-Karabakh and ensure greater international consolidation around Armenia and Karabakh, otherwise, the international community says, do not rely on us, not because we don't want to help, but because we can't help you,” Ismail said.

At the same time, he noted that earlier, during the first meeting in Brussels, held on December 14, there were certain recommendations. But what came of it. After all, even then, French President Emmanuel Macron, as the Armenian media wrote about this, strongly advised Pashinyan to moderate his claims.” - he said.

Nevertheless, Ismail hopes that the latest Brussels meeting will speed up the peace process, despite the provocations (shelling in the Tovuz region of the positions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces by Armenia) that took place immediately before the meeting of the heads of the two states.

“The provocations were carried out by forces in opposition to Pashinyan on the go-ahead from Moscow. Since Russia, busy with the war in Ukraine, was concerned that the EU was taking the initiative into its own hands. Holding peace talks on the South Caucasus without her participation could not irritate Moscow,” the expert is sure.

Ismail also drew attention to the fact that even during the Sochi summit on 26, an agreement was reached to establish an Azerbaijani-Armenian monitoring group to monitor the implementation of the tripartite statements and agreements dated November 10, 2020, January 11, 2021. However, no time frame for the implementation of this agreement was adopted at that time.

“This time, an agreement was reached on the establishment by the end of April of a special bilateral commission on the delimitation of the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which will, among other things, deal with issues of ensuring security and stability along the perimeter of the border,” the political scientist said, stressing that the establishment of a deadline can bear fruit.--0--