Armenia has numerously announced its readiness to start the process of a peace treaty, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in parliament.
He said that on March 10 one of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries conveyed to Armenia the Azerbaijani side’s perceptions regarding the fundamental principles of a peace treaty.
“These principles are the following: reciprocal recognition and respect of each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of internationally recognized borders and political independence; mutual confirmation of absence of territorial claims against each other and acceptance of legally binding obligations not to raise such claims in the future; mutual obligation to not create threats, including threats to use force for security, territorial integrity or political independence of each other in inter-state relations, and other actions incompatible with the UN Charter; delimitation and demarcation of the borders and establishment of diplomatic relations; unblocking of transport and other connections, creation of new communications, cooperation in other sectors of mutual interest.
We swiftly discussed these proposals and noted that there is nothing unacceptable for us in them, especially when de-jure Armenia recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders back in 1992 by ratifying the CIS treaty which is part of our national legislation till this day.
We’ve recorded that Armenia never had territorial claims against Azerbaijan and that the Karabakh issue is not a territorial issue but a matter of rights. And therefore, we recorded that the security guarantees of the Armenians of Karabakh, ensuring their rights and freedoms and the clarification of the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh are of principled significance for Armenia,” Pashinyan said.
The PM said that with this addition to the agenda Armenia is ready to launch the peace talks and this position was recorded during the latest Brussels meeting.
Pashinyan emphasized another “significant nuance”.
“If in the past we were placing the Karabakh status in the basis, and stemming security guarantees and rights from it, we are now placing the security guarantees and rights in the basis, stemming the status from it. In other words, we are recording that in this situation the status isn’t a goal, but a measure to ensure the security and rights of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan says.
