In an X post it said that the step followed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s public statement on November 18, calling for “intensified diplomatic efforts to achieve the signing of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.”
“Armenia remains committed to concluding and signing a document on normalization of relations based on previously announced principles,” the ministry said.
Earlier this month Azerbaijan accused Armenia of stalling the peace process by not responding to its latest proposal on a peace agreement for more than two months.
Armenia’s announcement came amid a continuing diplomatic row between Azerbaijan and two key Western stakeholders in the negotiation process – the United States and France.
Azerbaijan claims that the two countries that, along with Russia, have spearheaded international efforts to broker a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for decades, can no longer play their role as mediators due to their “pro-Armenian” bias.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly criticized France for its public statements as well as a recent agreement with Armenia on the supply of weapons that it claims “only bolsters Armenia’s military potential and its ability to carry out destructive operations in the region.” Both Paris and Yerevan have rejected Baku’s criticism as groundless.
The Azerbaijani parliament on Tuesday also condemned a bill adopted by the United States Senate last week that would suspend all military aid to Azerbaijan by repealing the Freedom Support Act Section 907 waiver authority for the president with respect to assistance to Baku for fiscal years 2024 or 2025.
Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act passed along with the adoption of the legislation in 1992 bans any kind of direct U.S. aid to the Azerbaijani government. A decade later, however, U.S. lawmakers amended Section 907 to allow presidents to repeal it annually to provide military assistance to Azerbaijan such as for countering international terrorism and border security.
The bill whose short title is the “Armenian Protection Act of 2023” is due to be introduced in the House of Representatives, then, if passed, presented to the U.S. president for signing to become a law.
While rejecting France and the United States as mediators, official Baku indicated over the weekend that it remained open to EU-mediated negotiations with Armenia. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, however, stressed that, above all, Baku preferred “direct talks” with Yerevan.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Monday that his country was ready for peace with Armenia that “will be based on mutual recognition of territorial integrity and sovereignty, as well as on wisdom and historical justice.”
“Armenia should plan its future based on its own national interests and not on the ambitions of states that are far from the region and have a bloody colonial past,” he said in an apparent reference to France.
The same day Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also criticized the West for “failing to understand” that “a new era has begun in the region after the Karabakh war.”
“It would be more correct that the people and leaders of Armenia seek security not thousands of kilometers away, but in peace and cooperation with their neighbors,” he said.
In his recent public remarks Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged the Azerbaijani leadership to publicly commit to the three key principles for achieving peace that he said were agreed upon by the parties during several rounds of Western-mediated negotiations in 2022 and 2023.
Pashinian outlined those principles as follows: Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other’s territorial integrity, the delimitation of the countries’ borders is based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration by which former Soviet republics recognized each other’s borders after the collapse of the USSR, and that regional trade and transport links are opened while respecting sovereign jurisdictions.
Pashinian made those statements as Aliyev appeared to be avoiding Western-mediated meetings with the Armenian leader since Baku carried out in September a one-day military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh that caused more than 100,000 people, virtually the entire Armenian population of the region, to flee to Armenia.
Western leaders have urged Azerbaijan to respect the right of Armenians to return to their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh and ensure the safety of those who decide to go back to the region that is now fully controlled by Baku.