Azerbaijan actively working to ensure lasting peace with Armenia, says minister

Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has said that Azerbaijan and Armenia are working on the post-conflict realities, including the peace agreement.

"The armed conflict that lasted almost thirty years due to the aggression of Armenia has ended, and for the first time since the restoration of their independence, Azerbaijan and Armenia are on the verge of peace, pledging mutual respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of borders," Bayramov said on June 6, speaking at a special meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, APA reports.

He added that despite the suffering, deprivation, and destruction that the Azerbaijani people have undergone for many years, Azerbaijan is actively working to ensure a lasting peace with Armenia.

The minister spoke about the opportunities and real prospects for establishing peace, strengthening stability, ensuring peaceful coexistence, advancing the peace agenda, and investing in economic development and cooperation.

According to Bayramov, as part of the Azerbaijani-Armenian normalization process, negotiations are underway on the text of a bilateral peace agreement.

He said the talks held over the past few weeks in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Chisinau have made it possible to better understand the positions of the parties.

"Azerbaijan expects mutual political will from the Armenian side to overcome differences in three specific areas that form the agenda of bilateral discussions. In this context, Armenia’s continued illegal military presence in the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan, consistent interference in internal affairs, obstruction of dialogue between the central authorities of Azerbaijan and the Armenian residents of the Karabakh region of the country, and the conduct of a smear campaign on an international scale, including within the framework of the OSCE, are the main obstacle for negotiations on the normalization of interstate relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia," the Azerbaijani minister noted.

In the meantime, Bayramov said Azerbaijan is determined to reintegrate the ethnic Armenians of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as equal citizens into the political, legal, economic and social framework of Azerbaijan.

For achieving this, in particular, he highlighted the need for strict observance of the obligations not to interfere in the internal affairs of states, not to harm the integration of persons belonging to national minorities, and not to incite separatism in the territory of neighbouring states.

Certain parts of Azerbaijan's Karabakh region are currently inhabited by approximately 25,000 people of Armenian origin, monitored by a temporary Russian peacekeeping mission. Shortly after the war, the government of Azerbaijan expressed its readiness to reintegrate these individuals into Azerbaijani society in accordance with the country’s Constitution and laws.

Armenia had been demanding so-called “status” and “self-determination” rights for these people. Baku rejected such demands as an intervention in Azerbaijan’s internal affairs and reaffirmed that Armenians living in the Karabakh region are Azerbaijani citizens. Azerbaijan considers the involvement of any third party in resolving issues related to their rights and security as unacceptable.