Mirzoyan complained about Baku’s repeated rejections of an Armenian proposal to sign an interim peace treaty that would leave out the few differences remaining between the two sides.
“For some reasons, for some calculations, they come up with new preconditions each time, and we can see that they just don’t want to sign the document … We don’t see this political will from the Azerbaijani side,” he told an international security conference in Poland.
He also said: “There are serious concerns that Azerbaijan has further military plans regarding Armenia’s territories. I can bring one example. Nowadays the Azerbaijani side uses the narrative of ‘Western Azerbaijan’ which basically coincides with almost the whole territory of Armenia. They assure us that this is not a territorial claim, but unfortunately the impression is completely different.”
The Armenian Foreign Ministry already claimed in June that Baku may be intent on unleashing a “new aggression” against Armenia after hosting the COP29 global summit in November. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said earlier this year that the Azerbaijani army would attack his country if he refused to cede several disputed border areas to Azerbaijan.
Pashinian proposed in August that the two nations sign a document containing the vast majority of the articles of a draft Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty which have already been agreed by them. He again refused to publicize those provisions when answering questions in the Armenian parliament on Wednesday.
Pashinian has repeatedly reiterated his proposal despite its categoric rejection by the Azerbaijani side. Also, Baku makes the signing of a peace deal with Yerevan conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution.
Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met in New York on September 26 for fresh talks hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. According to virtually identical Armenian and Azerbaijani readouts of the talks, the ministers agreed to “put additional efforts towards the conclusion” of a peace accord. An Armenian pro-government lawmaker said on Monday that they did not make progress towards the interim settlement sought by Yerevan.