Azerbaijan disrupts the agreements reached and may attack its neighbours – Pashinyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with Roland Oliphant, a correspondent of the British newspaper "The Telegraph", that the peace agreement with Azerbaijan is delayed due to Baku's fault.

In particular, Baku refuses to recognise Armenia's territorial integrity, although at a meeting in Prague in October 2022 it reaffirmed the following principle: Armenia and Azerbaijan recognise each other's territorial integrity on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, i.e. the borders that existed at that time, Pashinyan said.

On 31 October, a Trilateral Statement was signed by the President of Russia, the President of Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia, in which Armenia and Azerbaijan declared in writing that they recognise each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty and refrain from the use or threat of the use of force.

This agreement also formed the basis for the formation of the fundamental principle that the opening of communications, unblocking and opening of roads to each other will take place within the framework of respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries, a principle that was recorded at trilateral meetings in Brussels on 14 May and 15 July.

"The architecture and principles of the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been agreed and at the end of the last year it seemed that we were very close to finalising the text of the final treaty, but first Azerbaijan refused three times to participate in the negotiations in different formats, after which the Presidential elections were called in Azerbaijan."

"The Armenian government has the political will to go for peace in our region and sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan on the basis of the above-mentioned agreements," Pashinyan said.

On 10 January, President Aliyev gave an interview where he rejected delimitation based on Soviet military maps and wants to use maps from an earlier period when Azerbaijan lost a lot of territory. How does Yerevan assess this statement? To this question, Pashinyan replied that "this is a blow to the peace process, because in the trilateral and quadrilateral format, the agreement reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan that the two countries recognize each other's territorial integrity on the basis of the Alma Ata Declaration was recorded in writing."

"If Azerbaijan does not fulfil its international obligations, it can attack any of its neighbouring countries," Pashinyan said.