“I have said this many times and I want to reaffirm it now: security is one of the fundamental components of human well-being, equal at least to bread. From a strategic standpoint, the only reliable guarantee of security is peace. And I am pleased to state that, as you know, the draft treaty on Peace and the Establishment of Interstate Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been agreed upon, and the negotiations around finalizing the draft have been concluded,” said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the April 15 session of the National Assembly, while presenting the progress and results report for 2024 under the Government’s 2021–2026 Action Plan.
This means that we have entered the phase of discussing the signing of the agreement, and I have declared my readiness to sign the agreement on behalf of the people of Armenia.
Azerbaijan, at the official level, is linking the signing of the agreement to two issues. The first of these is the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group structures. I have said many times that this is an understandable agenda for the Republic of Armenia. If we are closing the chapter on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and we are, what is the purpose of maintaining a structure meant to deal with that conflict?
However, the OSCE Minsk Group has, at least de facto, a broader context, and we want to be sure that Azerbaijan does not view the dissolution of the Minsk Group as a step toward closing the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict within the territory of Azerbaijan and relocating it into the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.
To alleviate this concern, we are proposing to Azerbaijan that we simultaneously sign both the Peace Agreement and a joint application to the OSCE on dissolving the Minsk Group structures. In other words, we place both the Peace Agreement and the joint appeal to dissolve the Minsk Group on the table and sign both documents at the same time, in the same place. This is, in fact, an official proposal,” he said.
