Armenia has presented Azerbaijan with a comprehensive peace treaty to end years of dispute between its Caucasian neighbors over Nagorno-Karabakh.
This was stated by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a government meeting in Yerevan on Thursday.
“The final and complete version of the agreement with our proposals has been handed over,” Pashinyan said.
The two countries have fought two wars for control of the Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan that have claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Peace talks between the former Soviet republics through international mediation have since yielded little or no results.
He added that on Wednesday Yerevan completed “another stage of work on a draft peace treaty and the establishment of (diplomatic) relations” with Baku.
“The document must be acceptable to Azerbaijan… its signing must lead to a lasting peace,” Pashinyan said.
The agreement will provide monitoring mechanisms on both sides to prevent violations of the peace.
Copies were sent to members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Russia, the United States and France.
These countries are co-chairs of the Minsk Group, established by the OSCE in 1992 to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict.
The announcement came after Yerevan accused Baku of pursuing a “policy of ethnic cleansing” and forcing ethnic Armenians to leave the region.
Since mid-December, a group of Azerbaijani environmental activists have allegedly blocked the only road linking Karabakh with Armenia to protest illegal mining in the area.
However, according to Yerevan, the blockade has led to a “full-scale humanitarian crisis” in the mountainous region, where there is a shortage of food, medicine and fuel.
Armenia won the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, which ended in 1994, taking control of the region. However, Azerbaijan reclaimed most of the territory during the second war in 2020.
Sporadic clashes have erupted since then, despite a Russian-brokered peace deal. However, Armenia expressed disappointment with Russian peacekeepers in the region and called for a mission of international observers.
