Mogadishu
Somali Magazine –Armenia has presented Azerbaijan with a comprehensive peace treaty to end the Caucasus neighbors’ decades-long dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made the statement Thursday during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
“We have sent over the final and comprehensive text of an agreement with our ideas,” Pashinyan stated.
Tens of thousands of people have died in two conflicts between the two countries over control of Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region.
Peace discussions between the ex-Soviet states have made little, if any, results since then.
He went on to say that Yerevan has finished “another step of working on a project of a peace treaty and on establishing (diplomatic) ties” with Baku on Wednesday.
“The document must be acceptable to Azerbaijan… its signature must result in long-term peace,” Pashinyan stated.
A deal would include monitoring procedures for both sides to prevent violations of the peace.
Copies have been submitted to Russia, the United States, and France, all members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
These countries serve as co-chairs of the Minsk Group, which was established by the OSCE in 1992 to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict.
The declaration came after Yerevan accused Baku of carrying out a “ethnic cleansing program” by driving ethnic Armenians to flee the region.
A group of Azerbaijani environmental activists is said to have stopped the only route between Karabakh and Armenia since mid-December to protest illicit mining in the region.
According to Yerevan, the embargo has resulted in a “full-blown humanitarian crisis” in the mountainous region, which is suffering from a lack of food, medicines, and gasoline.
Armenia took control of the territory after winning the first Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. However, in the second conflict in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured much of the land.
Despite a peace pact brokered by Russia, sporadic hostilities have resumed subsequently. Armenia, on the other hand, has expressed dissatisfaction with Russian peacekeepers in the region and has urged for an international observer mission.