Azerbaijan and Armenia are closer than ever to lasting peace after decades of conflict, a senior Azerbaijani official said, though Baku insists Armenia amend its constitution before signing a final agreement.
The South Caucasus neighbors fought intermittently since the late 1980s, mostly over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, before reaching a preliminary U.S.-brokered peace agreement last August.
Azerbaijan's main sticking point for a formal deal is Armenia's constitution, whose preamble references a Soviet-era document calling for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous region of Soviet Azerbaijan.
It was illegally occupied by an ethnically Armenian administration for three decades before Azerbaijan reclaimed it through a military operation in 2023.
A lasting peace could reopen trade and transport links across the South Caucasus, strengthening connections between Asia and Europe while reshaping the regional influence of Russia, Türkiye and Iran.
In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of a forum in Shusha this week, Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to Azerbaijan's president and head of the president's foreign policy department, praised the countries' progress toward peace, including growing direct contacts and bilateral trade.
"We are living in conditions of real peace," he said. "For Azerbaijan and Armenia, peace is not just something written on paper or contained in a declaration – it is a reality." He pointed to increased supplies of Azerbaijani oil products to Armenia.
Despite the progress, he said Azerbaijan maintained its stance on Armenia's constitution.
"The form of constitutional changes is Armenia's internal matter," Hajiyev said. "What is important for Azerbaijan is that the provisions Azerbaijan regards as territorial claims against our country are formally removed, whether through the adoption of a new constitution or another legal mechanism."
"Once that issue is resolved, Azerbaijan believes there will be no obstacles to signing the final peace agreement," he said.
'Positive Signals'
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he plans to hold a referendum to change the constitution and that a draft of the new charter will be published by the end of this year.
But his Civil Contract party lacks the constitutional majority in parliament needed to call the referendum, and it is unclear whether the opposition, dominated by pro-Russian groups, will join him.
Hajiyev said publication of the draft alone would not be sufficient to sign a peace deal.
He also said Azerbaijan received "serious and positive signals" from the United States that construction work on a planned Washington-backed transport corridor in the region could begin this autumn.
Dubbed the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP)," the proposed 43-kilometer (27-mile) corridor would cut across Armenia and give Azerbaijan direct access to its exclave of Nakhchivan and its close ally Türkiye.
The route would better connect Asia to Europe at a time when Washington wants to diversify energy and trade flows away from Russia because of the war in Ukraine.
"Azerbaijan's position is that the TRIPP should be implemented as soon as possible," Hajiyev said.
He said infrastructure extending to Azerbaijan's southwestern Zangilan region would be largely completed by the end of 2026, after which it could be connected to planned infrastructure in Armenia and Türkiye.