Armenia wants peace, if Azerbaijan withdraws, stops aggression - opinion
Jerusalem PostDec 07, 2022
Armenia's PM Nikol Pashinyan announced on Thursday that a project for a full peace treaty to end the decades-long dispute over the Caucasus' Nagorno-Karabakh region has been presented to Azerbaijan.
The draft document has also been handed over to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairing countries; the US, Russia, and France.
This peace treaty project displays Armenia's long-standing commitment to restoring peace in the Caucasus, which Azerbaijan has so far failed to meet. It's Azerbaijan's occupation of the Armenian sovereign territory and aggressiveness toward Armenians that is blocking peace, not Armenia. If Baku is indeed pragmatic and serious about peace, there's nothing impeding its return to negotiations.
This proposal is yet another political stunt made by Yerevan to try to deceive foreign powers into putting pressure on Baku in a cynical game of power politics that uses ethnic Armenians in Karabakh merely as pawns. There is no commitment to peace in this offering as Armenia has once again engaged in negotiations to play for time as it seeks to prepare its troops for a new offensive.
There's a 50% chance that the Armenia–Turkey border will reopen by October 2023, according to the Metaculus prediction community.