Baku (agencies)
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced yesterday that reaching a peace agreement with Armenia is closer than ever, while two teams from the two countries began the border demarcation process in the hope of ending decades of territorial disputes. Yesterday, two teams from the two countries established a border marker after officials agreed to demarcate a section based on maps dating back to the Soviet era.
“We are getting closer to that than ever before,” Aliyev said, referring to the possibility of reaching a peace agreement, adding, “We now have a common understanding of what a peace agreement should look like, we just have to deal with the details.”
He continued, “Both parties need time. We both have the political desire to do this.”
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to return four border villages that were part of Azerbaijan.
Aliyev confirmed that he agreed to a proposal submitted by Kazakhstan to host a meeting of foreign ministers. Aliyev downplayed the importance of the need for the intervention of third parties, adding, “What is happening now at our borders shows that when we are left alone, we can agree as soon as possible.”
Experts from the two countries erected the first border marker yesterday, according to what was stated in two identical statements.
Protests broke out earlier in Armenia, as demonstrators briefly disrupted traffic at several points on the highway linking Armenia and Georgia.
Yerevan confirmed that it would not transfer “lands belonging to Armenia’s sovereignty” to its neighbor.
In the 1990s, Armenian forces seized the four abandoned regions that will be returned to Azerbaijan: Lower Askiapara, Baganis-Ayrum, Khyrimli and Gesylhajili, forcing their ethnic Azerbaijani residents to flee.
In turn, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stressed the need to resolve the border dispute “to avoid a new conflict.” Last Saturday, he said that the Russian guards deployed in the region since 1992 will be replaced and border guards from Armenia and Azerbaijan will cooperate to guard the country's borders themselves.
He added that the demarcation of the border represents a “big change,” noting that separating the two countries with “a border, not a line of contact, is an indication of peace.”
Last fall, Azerbaijani forces regained the Nagorno-Karabakh region from the grip of Armenian separatists as part of a one-day operation that put an end to a decades-long conflict over the region, but territorial claims posed a continuing threat of new escalation.
Baku claims four additional villages located in deeper pockets within Armenian territory. It also calls for the establishment of a land corridor through Armenia to connect the mainland with the Nakhichevan enclave and all the way to Türkiye.
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