YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday that he has proposed the signing of a non-aggression pact to Azerbaijan, pending a comprehensive peace treaty between the arch-foe Caucasus neighbors.
\nYerevan and Baku have fought two wars \u2014 in 2020 and in the 1990s \u2014 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan recaptured in a lightning offensive last year.
\n\u201cWe have presented Azerbaijan with a proposal for a mutual arms control mechanism and the signing of a non-aggression pact if the signature of a peace treaty encounters delays,\u201d Pashinyan said in a speech during an Armenian Army Day celebration event.
\nHe also said that Armenia \u2014 a longstanding ally of Russia which had voiced fears of Azerbaijani military moves against its territory \u2014 must revise its security arrangements.
\n\u201cWe need to reconsider our strategic thinking in the security sphere and diversify our (international) relations in that sphere,\u201d Pashinyan said.
\n\u201cWe are set to purchase new and modern weapons, and over the last years the government has signed contracts on arms procurement worth billions of dollars,\u201d he added.
\nAzerbaijan has denied having territorial claims to Armenia and ruled out a fresh conflict with its fellow ex-Soviet republic.
\nPashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had previously said a peace agreement could have been signed by the end of the last year.
\nBut internationally mediated peace talks have so far failed to produce a breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Last month, Armenia and Azerbaijan swapped prisoners of war, a first step toward normalizing relations.
\nThe European Union, the United States as well as regional powers Turkiye and Russia have praised the move as a \u201cbreakthrough.\u201d
\nThe prisoner exchange raised hopes for reviving face-to-face talks between Pashinyan and Aliyev.
\nThe pair have met several times for normalization talks mediated by EU chief Charles Michel.
\nBut the process has been on hold since October.
\nTraditional regional power broker Russia, bogged down with its dragging Ukraine offensive, has seen its influence wane in the Caucasus.
\nAliyev sent troops to Karabakh on September 19 and after just one day of fighting Armenian separatists \u2014 who had controlled the region for three decades \u2014 surrendered and agreed to reintegrate with Baku.
\nBut in December, separatist leader Samvel Shahramanyan said in Yerevan that his previous decree ordering the dissolution of separatist institutions was not valid.
\nAlmost the entire ethnic-Armenian population \u2014 more than 100,00 people \u2014 fled Karabakh for Armenia following Baku\u2019s takeover, sparking a refugee crisis.
\nAzerbaijan\u2019s victory in September marked the end of the territorial dispute, which had long been seen as unresolvable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday that he has proposed the signing of a non-aggression pact to Azerbaijan, pending a comprehensive peace treaty between the arch-foe Caucasus neighbors. Yerevan and Baku have fought two wars \u2014 in 2020 and in the 1990s \u2014 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan recaptured in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60142,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133\/revisions\/60142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}