Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to reciprocally recognise each other’s territorial integrity, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union Council, at which President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin were also present.
“I want to confirm that Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to reciprocally recognise each other’s territorial integrity, and based on that, it could be said, we are on our way to normalising our relations,” he stated, as quoted by Russia’s state news agency TASS.
According to Pashinyan, Armenia is ready to unblock all transport and economic corridors as well as open regional communications with Azerbaijan.
In his turn, Aliyev declared that "there are serious prerequisites for normalisation of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia based on the recognition of territorial integrity and sovereignty”.
Despite these statements, there was a verbal altercation between the heads of two states during the council meeting. During his speech, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had initiated the “creation of the Zangezur corridor” — this corridor is the road that would join the main territory of Azerbaijan with the Azerbaijani region of Nakhchivan, which is separated from mainland Azerbaijan by Armenia.
In his turn, Pashinyan called “Zangezur corridor” an “expression used by Azerbaijan in recent years as an attempt to put forward territorial claims against Armenia”.
“I want to emphasise that the trilateral declaration dated 9 November 2020 includes only one corridor, and that’s the Lachin corridor,” the Armenian prime minister added.
Aliyev replied saying that Azerbaijan holds no territorial claims towards Armenia, and added that “there has to be a lot of effort put into seeing territorial claims” in his words.
On 22 May, Pashinyan said that Armenia was ready to recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan on condition of security guarantees for the Armenian population.
“After we sign the peace treaty, there is an idea to create a demilitarised zone along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, which I think is a suggestion worth discussing,” Pashinyan added.
