Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds over the Nagorno-Karabakh region for decades. Despite a ceasefire, conflicts continue to arise. Now Armenia is making a peace offer to the neighboring country.
The former Soviet republic of Armenia has made an offer of peace in the conflict with its neighbor Azerbaijan, according to official sources. “The final and complete variant of an agreement with our proposals has been handed over,” said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a government meeting in Yerevan. Both countries have been fighting over the conflict region of Nagorno-Karabakh for decades.
According to Pashinyan, an agreement should provide for mechanisms of mutual control that prevent violations of the peace. Yerevan has prepared a document and is ready to sign it at any time. “Obviously it must also be acceptable for Azerbaijan,” Pashinyan said. Copies of the draft treaty were also sent to the OSCE group states that chaired the Minsk group: Russia, the USA and France.
In the course of the collapse of the Soviet Union, an ethnic conflict broke out between the two republics over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is on Azerbaijani territory but inhabited mostly by Armenians. The first war over Nagorno-Karabakh ended in 1994 with the region’s detachment from Azerbaijan and control of the area by Armenia. In the second war, which Azerbaijan started in 2020, the authoritarian leadership took back large parts of the region.
Despite a ceasefire, there have been repeated border conflicts ever since. Azerbaijanis have also been blocking the Lachin Corridor, Armenia’s only access to Nagorno-Karabakh, for months. In this context, Yerevan was also disappointed by the inaction of the Russian peacekeeping force in the region and has spoken out in favor of an international observer mission.
