Armenia and Azerbaijan Near Signing of Finalized Peace Treaty

Azerbaijan and Armenia have announced that the draft peace treaty between the two countries has been finalized and will soon be signed, according to the European Pravda website.

Although both parties had previously claimed that the peace treaty was 90% or even 95% agreed upon, the prospect of a near-term signing seemed remote.

Armenia primarily needed the treaty to reopen its border with Turkey, which would ease its semi-isolation and allow exports to be transported either through Iran or Georgia.

Azerbaijan, however, had less of a pressing need for the treaty, as it had already de facto resolved all “territorial issues” through military means.

Construction of Armenian fortifications on the conditional border with Azerbaijan. March-April 2024. A frame from the video of the Azerbaijani Defense MinistryAs a result, Azerbaijan frequently made new demands, some of which were seen as provocative, such as the request to change Armenia’s state coat of arms, which depicts Mount Ararat located in modern-day Turkey.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan assured that the peace agreement does not include any clauses exclusively benefiting Armenia without consideration of Azerbaijan.

“There are no secrets from the public in this agreement. Some sections of the agreement have already been published, so the public is already familiar with its content,” Pashinyan stated, adding that while the full text has not yet been made public, key provisions have been discussed over the past four years.

Pashinyan emphasized that the agreement represents a compromise: “If an agreement was reached, it means that the Azerbaijani side recognizes this text as beneficial to itself to some extent, and the Republic of Armenia decided that it was also beneficial to it.”

According to the European Pravda, the key points of the agreements were the following:

• The parties refuse to file lawsuits against each other in international courts.
  The parties agreed to refuse to deploy forces of third countries on the border.

Armenia ratified the Rome Statute, which has strained its relations with the Russian Federation, mainly to enable lawsuits against Azerbaijani leadership. This concession may be perceived negatively by the Armenian public.

It is also worth noting that in September 2024, Armenian authorities decided to suspend their participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).