It was announced on Thursday that the Armenian government has accepted Azerbaijani proposals regarding the two remaining articles of the draft treaty that were not yet agreed upon. Yerevan specifically agreed to the mutual withdrawal of international lawsuits filed by the two South Caucasus countries against each other and the removal of European monitors deployed Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan two years ago. Pashinian and his foreign minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, have pointedly refused to say which concessions, if any, Baku made for its part.
“These authorities have agreed to everything that was demanded by Azerbaijan,” said Artur Khachatrian, a senior lawmaker from the opposition Hayastan alliance. “Now these authorities are blackmailing the people of the Republic of Armenia and all Armenians, saying that if we suddenly did not submit to Azerbaijan's demands, there would be war.”
The second parliamentary opposition force, the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), decried Pashinian’s “unilateral anti-state concession” and “double capitulation” to Baku. It demanded that the authorities immediately publicize the text of the draft treaty.
In a written statement, the party headed by former President Serzh Sarkisian at the same time said, “Nikol Pashinian does not have the mandate and legitimacy to sign such agreements on behalf of the Armenian people.”
“If [Pashinian] had said in the 2021 elections that he would cede Artsakh and recognize it as part of Azerbaijan, that ethnic cleansing and genocidal action would take place [in Nagorno-Karabakh,] how many people would have voted for him?” argued Hayk Mamijanian, the HHK’s parliamentary leader.
Meanwhile, Mirzoyan touted the announced agreement to eliminate the remaining sticking points, echoing Pashinian’s statement made the previous day.
Armenia - Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan speaks during a news conference in Yerevan, January 8, 2024.
“I consider this an extremely important milestone in the normalization of relations and the establishment of peace in the region around us, around Armenia,” the minister told lawmakers.
Mirzoyan said Yerevan now expects to start “as soon as possible” consultations with Baku on when and where to sign the negotiated treaty.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and his ministry reiterated on Thursday that its signing is conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution which Baku says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. One of Bayramov’s deputies, Elnur Mammadov, reaffirmed this condition on Friday.
While rejecting this demand in public, Pashinian has pledged to try to enact a new Armenian constitution through a referendum. But this is unlikely to happen before June 2026.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has also set other conditions for making peace with Armenia. Those include the opening of a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave through a key Armenian region.
Earlier this year, Aliyev renewed his threats to open the corridor by force. Armenian opposition leaders and other critics of Pashinian say that the treaty would not preclude such military action.
Mirzoyan insisted that the treaty does not call for any extraterritorial transport links for Nakhichevan. He also admitted that it “will not answer all possible questions.”
“But this agreement provides for mechanisms that we and Azerbaijan can use after the agreement enters into force to resolve issues and finally normalize relations,” he added without elaborating.
Opposition leaders have said all along that Aliyev has no intention to sign any agreement before clinching more far-reaching concessions from Pashinian. They maintain that Pashinian’s appeasement policy has only encouraged the Azerbaijani strongman to make more demands on Yerevan.