YEREVAN, December 24. /TASS/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Friday that Yerevan is interested in signing a peace treaty with Baku.
"Naturally, we are interested in signing a peace treaty and the beginning of talks on it. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs have recently offered an agenda for the talks. One of its provisions was the issue of the comprehensive peace settlement. We are interested in it. We have never refused to discuss this topic and are not going to refuse," he said in a live broadcast on his Facebook account.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France, and the United States.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. Under the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the engagement line in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia with the enclave to exercise control of the ceasefire observance. Apart from that, a number of districts came over to Baku’s control.
Several months later, on January 11, the three leaders met in Moscow and reached an agreement on unblocking regional communications. Following this agreement, a working group at the level of deputy prime ministers was set up.
Putin, Aliyev and Pashinyan met again in Sochi on November 26. The talks were timed to mark the anniversary of their ceasefire statement. The three leaders agreed to take steps to enhance stability and security at the Azerbaijani-Armenian border. They also agreed that a bilateral commission on the delimitation and demarcation of the state border should be set by Azerbaijan and Armenia. Russia will provide consultancy on the sides’ request.