“Conflict in the South Caucasus must end,” Waltz said in an X post on Sunday. “I spoke this week with Mr. Hikmet Hajiyev, the national security advisor for President Aliyev in Azerbaijan.
“We are pleased Azerbaijan and Armenia have taken a big step forward and agreed to a peace treaty. I told him we should finalize this peace deal now, release the prisoners, and work together to make the region more secure and prosperous.”
“America's Golden Age will bring peace and prosperity to the world, and we won't stop working until that happens,” added Waltz.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the two South Caucasus nations on Friday the day after they announced that they have bridged their remaining differences on the text of the draft treaty. Following that announcement, Baku continued to make the signing of the treaty conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution.
It has also set other conditions for ending the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, including the opening of a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave that would pass through, Syunik a key Armenian region. Earlier this year, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev renewed his implicit threats to order military action against Armenia for that purpose.
In what many in Armenia construed as a potential prelude to such an invasion, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on Sunday twice accused Armenian troops of violating the ceasefire at a Syunik section of the border between the two states. The Armenian military swiftly denied those accusations.
In an apparent response to Baku’s claims, European Union monitors deployed on the Armenian side of the border issued on Monday a short statement saying: “On 16-17 March, [the monitoring mission] dispatched patrols to various locations along the [Armenia-Azerbaijan] border. The situation remains calm and quiet, with no unusual activity observed.”
Meanwhile, Armenian officials hailed Waltz’s calls for the release of at least 23 Armenians remining in Azerbaijani captivity. The prisoners include eight former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh standing trial in Baku.
“Let's hope that this statement will be followed by clear steps and that it won't just be a statement for the sake of a statement,” parliament speaker Alen Simonian told journalists.
When asked what exactly Washington should do, Simonian said: “I don't know. Let them call [Azerbaijani leaders,] make an agreement on how to return our prisoners, our people, everyone without exception, regardless of when they were captured.”
Waltz made his statement two days after the two main Armenian-American lobby groups voiced serious misgivings about the reported breakthrough in Armenian-Azerbaijani talks on the bilateral peace accord.
“True peace cannot be achieved until all Armenian captives and POWs are released, and we urge you to use every tool at your disposal to secure their immediate freedom,” the co-chairs of the Armenian Assembly of America, Oscar Tatosian and Talin Yacoubian, said in a letter to Trump.
They urged the Trump administration to “ensure strong security guarantees for the Armenian people and impose severe consequences should Azerbaijan violate this agreement.”
Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, was even more skeptical about the finalized peace deal, suggesting that it amounts to a “one-sided surrender of Armenian security and sovereignty forced on Yerevan at the point of a gun.” Rubio’s statement was therefore “premature,” Hamparian said in a statement.
