2024-04-23 21:49:22
Baku (agencies)
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced yesterday that reaching a peace deal with Armenia was closer than ever, as two teams from the two countries began the process of demarcating the border in hopes of ending to decades of territorial conflicts. Two teams from the two countries established a boundary marker yesterday after authorities agreed to demarcate a section based on Soviet-era maps.
“We are getting closer than ever,” Aliyev said, referring to the possibility of reaching a peace deal, adding: “We now have a common understanding of what a peace deal should look like, we just need to deal with the problems.
He continued: “Both sides need time. We both have the political desire to do this.”
Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to return four border villages that were part of Azerbaijan.
Aliyev confirmed that he accepted a proposal submitted by Kazakhstan to host a meeting of foreign ministers. Aliyev downplayed the need for third-party intervention, adding: “What is currently happening on our borders shows that when we are left alone, we can come to an agreement as soon as possible.”
Experts from the two countries erected the first border marker yesterday, according to two identical declarations.
Protests erupted earlier in Armenia, when demonstrators briefly disrupted traffic at several points on the highway linking Armenia and Georgia.
Yerevan confirmed that it would not transfer “lands belonging to the sovereignty of Armenia” to its neighbor.
In the 1990s, Armenian forces seized the four abandoned areas that would be returned to Azerbaijan: Lower Askiapara, Baganis-Ayrum, Khyremli and Gesylhajili, forcing their ethnic Azerbaijani residents to flee.
In turn, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stressed the need to resolve the border dispute “to avoid a new conflict.” Last Saturday, he said Russian guards deployed in the region since 1992 would be replaced and that border guards from Armenia and Azerbaijan would cooperate to guard the country’s borders themselves.
He added that the border demarcation represents a “big change,” stressing that separating the two countries by “a border, not a line of contact, is an indication of peace.”
Last fall, Azerbaijani forces retook the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenian separatists in a daylong operation that ended a decades-long conflict in the region, but territorial claims constitute a constant threat of further escalation.
Baku claims four additional villages located in deeper pockets of Armenian territory. It also calls for the establishment of a land corridor through Armenia to connect the continent to the Nakhichevan enclave and on to Turkey.
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