After years of disagreements and conflict, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday declared his readiness to sign the draft of a peace deal agreed upon between his country and neighboring Azerbaijan.
"The draft of the Peace Agreement between #Armenia and #Azerbaijan has been agreed upon and is waiting to be signed. I'm ready to put my signature under the agreed draft," Pashinyan said in a statement on X.
Baku announced that a consensus had been reached on all articles of the peace agreement with Armenia last week. No further details were shared on the specific articles.
On the other side, however, Azerbaijan on Tuesday reported cross-border fire against its military positions from Armenia for the third consecutive day. An initial statement by the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said its military positions were fired upon overnight by Armenian troops located near the settlements of Arpa, Saybali and Vagan in the Keshishkend, Garakilseh and Chenbarak regions, respectively.
The statement said the cross-border incident took place between 10:15 p.m. on Monday and 12:20 a.m. local time on Tuesday (6:15 p.m. GMT and 8:20 p.m. GMT Monday). It said in a later statement that Armenian forces near the Istisu settlement of the Basarkechar district also fired at Azerbaijani military positions at around 8:55 a.m. local time (4:55 a.m. GMT) on Tuesday.
Armenia's Defense Ministry issued a standard denial to both reports, claiming that they "do not correspond to reality."
The latest reports marked the third consecutive day that Azerbaijan accused Armenia of firing at its military positions.
Pashinyan's remarks came as both Azerbaijan and Armenia separately announced an agreement on the draft of a peace deal last Thursday, set to end a decades-long conflict and establish diplomatic ties between Baku and Yerevan.
Relations between Baku and Yerevan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and seven adjacent regions, including Lachin. Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a 44-day war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement that opened the door to normalization talks and the demarcation of their border.
After a series of slow-moving negotiations, Azerbaijan rushed in troops last year in September and swiftly seized back Karabakh, whose entire population of nearly 120,000 people returned to Armenia after rejecting a reintegration program Baku offered. Earlier in 2024, Armenia withdrew from several Azerbaijani villages it had controlled since the early 1990s as part of the peace process.
