Yerevan is ready to recognise the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave as part of neighbouring Azerbaijan if the country’s authorities guarantee the security of its indigenous Armenian population, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikos Pashinyan said according to the Russian state-owned news agency TASS.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been a source of conflict between the two Caucasus neighbours since the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and between indigenous Armenians and Turkic Azeris for well over a century.
In 2020, Azerbaijan invaded areas that had been controlled by the indigenous Armenians in and around the mountain enclave, and since then it has closed the only access road linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, on which the enclave relies for financial and military support.
“The 86,600 sq km of Azerbaijan’s territory includes Nagorno-Karabakh,” Pashinyan told a news conference, according to Ostorozhno, Novosti (Caution, News). “If we understand each other correctly, then Armenia recognises the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within the named limits, and Baku – the territorial integrity of Armenia at 29,800 sq km.”
The outlet quoted him as saying he was prepared to do this – in effect accept Azerbaijan’s internationally recognised borders – if the rights of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh were guaranteed.
He said the issue should be discussed in talks between the two countries.
“Armenia remains committed to the peace agenda in the region. And we hope that in the near future we will come to an agreement on the text of the peace treaty and be able to sign it,” he said, according to TASS.