Azerbaijan Will Do Everything to Thwart Peace Agreement Process with Armenia: Julhakyan

The Member of the National Assembly from the 'Civil Contract' party, Arusyak Julhakyan, stated during the third part of the annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg that Azerbaijan is regularly spreading misinformation, claiming that Armenia is violating the ceasefire regime, in an attempt to prepare for a new escalation.

She emphasized that on April 19, the delimitation commissions of Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an important agreement. The parties agreed that the delimitation process would be based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration.

“Based on this agreement, the parties reached consensus on the delimitation of specific sections of the northern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to align them with the inter-republican border that existed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. More than 12 kilometers of the border have been delineated on this basis, and the border services of both countries have been deployed to the agreed sections of the border. This was undoubtedly a positive and stabilizing step in the process of normalizing relations,” she said.

Nevertheless, ten days later, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in the symbolic city of Alma-Ata for peace agreement negotiations, but no significant progress was made there, as Azerbaijan is reluctant to reflect the agreements already reached in the peace treaty.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan presented new preconditions, stating that they would only be ready to sign the peace agreement if Armenia changes its Constitution, as they claim that its provisions have territorial demands, which does not correspond to reality,” she added.

According to Julhakyan, the Republic of Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity and inviolability of borders of all its neighbors.

“The Republic of Armenia is committed to this principle and does not have aspirations beyond its internationally recognized territory of 29,743 square kilometers. Amendments to the Constitution and the internal affairs of Armenia should not be intervened by official Baku, and we regard attempts to interfere in the domestic discussions that have started since 2018 as gross interference in our internal affairs. Such rhetoric torpedoes the peace process and calls into question the sincerity of the Azerbaijani leadership in achieving peace.

In addition to the aforementioned, Azerbaijan has recently resumed periodically disseminating misinformation that Armenia is violating the ceasefire regime. Azerbaijan behaves this way every time it prepares for a new escalation.

On June 15, the Prime Minister of Armenia announced that it is the government’s will to prevent the emergence of tension and proposed to Azerbaijan to create a bilateral mechanism to investigate cases of ceasefire violations. To this day, no response has been received from Azerbaijan regarding this proposal.

Dear colleagues, the behavior of Azerbaijan in predicting regional escalations at every opportunity is concerning and substantiates the analyses of several expert centers that Azerbaijan will do everything to thwart the peace agreement process with Armenia in order to launch new aggression against the Republic of Armenia after the COP29 summit in Baku scheduled for November 2024.

I call your attention and that of the international community to this fact, as well as to the circumstance that Armenia's official proposal to sign a peace agreement has remained unanswered by official Baku for over a month,” the deputy concluded.