Baku will not sign peace agreement on terms proposed by Pashinyan — Azerbaijan MFA

Azerbaijani authorities are not going to sign a peace agreement with Armenia on the terms proposed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, said Ayhan Hajizadeh, the spokesperson of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

“In general, over the past few weeks, Armenian officials have limited themselves to mostly contradictory statements regarding the peace treaty. They distort the realities of the peace process. The Armenian side proposes to sign a peace agreement based on the currently agreed provisions. However, the Azerbaijani side considers such an approach unacceptable and has repeatedly expressed its position. There is a rule that a document is not considered agreed until all its clauses are agreed,” he said.

According to Hajizadeh, negotiations on the draft are conducted behind closed doors, and details are not disclosed to the general public. All that can be said is that about 80 percent of the provisions have been agreed upon so far.

“You cannot just rule out unagreed clauses. For the peace agreement to be durable and successful, it is necessary to clarify the remaining problematic issues in a number of areas. In general, in order to sign the draft agreement, Armenia must first of all make appropriate amendments to its Constitution, which currently retains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. As long as Armenia does not exclude these claims from its legislative acts, it will be impossible to reach peace between the two countries,” he added.