Armenian Prime Minister announces agreement on key principles of peace with Azerbaijan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Saturday announced the agreement with Azerbaijan on the key principles of peace. His statement was published by the press service of the head of the Armenian government, UNN reports.

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First of all, we are talking about the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process. We have both good and bad news. The good news is that the main principles of peace with Azerbaijan have been agreed upon

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According to him, this happened through the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel as a result of meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels. 

"The most important bad news is that we still speak different diplomatic languages and very often do not understand each other," Pashinyan said. 

"Of course, there are objective reasons for this. There is a long-standing conflict with a certain historical context, thousands of victims whose relatives find it very difficult to look them in the eye, dozens of prisoners whose relatives have no answers to their questions, an atmosphere of hatred that has prevailed for decades, and suspicions that constructive statements hide bad intentions. Moreover, what I'm talking about is more or less relevant to both Armenia and Azerbaijan," the Armenian prime minister said.

At the same time, Pashinyan noted that Azerbaijan, for example, has never publicly referred to the three agreed principles, nor confirmed its commitment to these principles, "which deepens the atmosphere of distrust."

"It also looks extremely suspicious that under the highest patronage in Azerbaijan, and in fact at the official level, the Republic of Armenia has begun to be called "Western Azerbaijan." (...) This seems to us to be a preparation for the organization of a new war, a new military aggression against Armenia, and is one of the main obstacles to the advancement of the peace process," Pashinyan said.

Supplement

As DW notes, in late October Pashinyan said that a peace agreement with Azerbaijan could be concluded in the coming months. "Now we are working with Azerbaijan on a draft agreement on peace and settlement of relations," the head of the Armenian government said. According to him, Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to mutually recognize each other's territorial integrity on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, according to which Armenia's area is 29,800 square kilometers and Azerbaijan's is 86,600 square kilometers. The peace agreement will also mean the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states, the newspaper points out.