Baku/Tbilisi – Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on the final text of a peace treaty to formally end their decades-long conflict over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Both sides are now discussing the date and venue for the signing, marking a crucial step toward lasting stability in the region.
“The work on the text has been completed,” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said, adding that Armenia had accepted Azerbaijan’s proposals on two outstanding issues.
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Armenia’s foreign ministry also confirmed that representatives of both countries had reached a consensus on the treaty. “Armenia is willing to start consultations with Azerbaijan regarding the date and place of the signing,” the ministry said.
Previously, the two nations had agreed on 15 of the 17 articles of the treaty, with unresolved matters concerning legal complaints before international courts and the presence of foreign forces along their shared border.
The peace negotiations trace back to an April 2022 meeting in Brussels, where Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to launch talks and establish a joint border commission.
Pashinyan hailed the completion of the treaty’s text as an “important event” and reaffirmed Armenia’s commitment to allowing Azerbaijan transit access to Nakhchivan, one of Baku’s key demands, provided that Armenian sovereignty over the transit routes is respected.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has conditioned the treaty’s signing on amendments to Armenia’s constitution, which Baku claims threatens its territorial integrity.
Pashinyan, however, has rejected this assertion, stating that Armenia’s constitution contains no territorial claims over Azerbaijan, whereas Azerbaijan’s constitution does include such claims over Armenian territory.
Pashinyan also argued that the peace treaty, once signed, would override national legislation, helping to resolve these lingering disputes.
The nearly 1,000-km border between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains undefined due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which erupted following the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The two countries have fought two wars over the enclave, one won by Armenia in 1994 and the second by Azerbaijan in 2020. Russia’s TASS state news agency cited Pashinyan as telling journalists on Thursday that the agreement would prevent personnel from third countries deploying along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
That provision would likely cover a European Union civilian monitoring mission that Baku has criticised, as well as Russian border guards who police parts of Armenia’s frontiers.
The outbreak of hostilities in the late 1980s prompted mass expulsions of hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim Azeris from Armenia and Armenians, who are majority Christian, from Azerbaijan.
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