Pashinyan says will step up efforts to agree peace deal with Azerbaijan
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says he intends to intensify political and diplomatic efforts to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.
In late October, Pashinyan said he planned to conclude a peace deal with Azerbaijan "in the coming months".
"Our political will to conclude a peace treaty with Azerbaijan in the coming months remains unwavering," he said in parliament on Thursday.
"Is it realistic to sign a peace treaty by the end of the year or in the coming months? The three key principles of peace, in fact, have been agreed upon with Azerbaijan during the trilateral meetings in Brussels," Pashinyan stated.
He says the core principles are the mutual recognition of each other's territorial integrity based on the maps of the USSR General Staff, delimitation and demarcation of the shared border based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration and the unblocking of transport links in a way that respects the two countries' sovereignty and jurisdiction.
"If the principles of the peace treaty with Azerbaijan are agreed upon, why don’t we sign it? By and large the reason is the distrust between the parties, because every time we see in Azerbaijan's statements and actions its refusal of agreements and plans for aggressive actions, and they might see the same in ours, which negatively affects the work to draft the peace treaty," Pashinyan said.