Pashinian listed over a dozen peace proposals on Thursday two days after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made fresh threats of military action against Armenia. The proposals include the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh, something which has for months been demanded by Baku. Pashinian had previously set conditions for doing that.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aykhan Hajizade, brushed aside these overtures later in the day, saying that Armenia is still not “interested in building peace with its neighbors.” He said that Yerevan remains reluctant to change the Armenian constitution which Baku claims contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
“Sorry, but your argumentation cannot be considered a confirmation of the ‘good intentions’ of Armenia,” Hajizade wrote on the X social media platform.
Aliyev again made clear that the change of the constitution is one of his preconditions for signing a peace treaty with Armenia. He also insisted on the opening of an extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan through a strategic Armenian region, threatening to use force for that purpose.
Armenian opposition figures portrayed Aliyev’s latest threats as further proof that Pashinian’s appeasement policy is only encouraging Azerbaijan to demand more Armenian concessions and will not bring peace. They claimed that Baku is gearing up for a large-scale invasion of Armenia.