Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on the language of a historic peace agreement that could mark the end of decades of conflict between the two neighbouring South Caucasus countries.
Months-long negotiations have now come to a close, said the two sides, which have fought several bloody wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But major sticking points remain and it is unclear when the agreement could actually be signed.
Azerbaijan’s foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov said late on Thursday that the talks had now concluded. The foreign ministry in Armenia confirmed that it agreed to the latest proposal.
“The peace agreement is ready for signing,” Armenia’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that Yerevan was “ready to start consultations with Azerbaijan on the date and place of signing the agreement”.
The on-off negotiations, mediated by the EU and occasionally by Russia, have intensified since the autumn of 2023 after a lightning assault by Azerbaijan led to the oil-rich country successfully returning the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh to its control.
The 24-hour military operation prompted an exodus of some 100,000 Armenians living in the mountainous area that was internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s but had been ruled de facto from 1991 as a self-proclaimed, independent ethnic Armenian territory.
Yerevan saw the takeover as a betrayal by Russia, its former protector which had stationed peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, but had by then been distracted by its war in Ukraine.
That conflict, as well as older ones, such as a war that began in the late 1980s and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, continue to divide the two neighbours.
Western officials welcomed the apparent breakthrough in negotiations. The announcements “represent a decisive step towards lasting peace and security” in the region, said EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas. German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock praised Armenia for “making courageous concessions”.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said it was “an opportunity for both countries to turn the page on a decades old conflict”, urging them to “commit to peace, sign and ratify the treaty”.
Thomas de Waal, senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, said the step “lowers the risk of war”. The two sides “evidently want to stabilise the situation, particularly with Russia seeing more opportunities in the region after a possible ceasefire in Ukraine”.
“But there is still a long way to go,” de Waal said.
Several major issues remain unresolved, with discussions ongoing separately, he said.
Of these, the most challenging is Azerbaijan’s demand that Armenia change its constitution to remove any references to Nagorno-Karabakh.
“[Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinyan wants a new constitution but does not want to be seen to be adopting one under public pressure from Baku,” de Waal said. “And he faces elections in 2026. So this issue might not be solved until 2027.”
Armenia in turn has concerns over demands for a corridor connecting Baku to an Azerbaijani exclave called Nakhchivan located on the other side of Armenia. Many in Yerevan see these demands as a risk to Armenia’s territorial integrity.
The fate of several ethnic Armenian leaders from Nagorno-Karabakh who are currently on trial in Baku also remains unclear, and has not been mentioned by officials announcing the conclusion of the talks, suggesting the issue is not on the table.
Among them is billionaire businessman Ruben Vardanian, a former banking executive in Russia who moved to the enclave in 2022 and briefly held a top political job there just before it fell. He was arrested while attempting to flee. Last month, Vardanyan launched a second hunger strike to protest against his trial, which he described as a “judicial farce”.
But the two sides do appear to have overcome other sticking points, such as lawsuits that they had filed against each other in international courts, which would now be withdrawn.
Azerbaijan has also demanded an end to an OSCE monitoring mission stationed on the volatile border between the two countries. Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the UK Elin Suleymanov told the Financial Times that mission was “long irrelevant and obsolete”, adding that it remained an obstacle to the signing of the agreement.
But he welcomed the progress on the talks overall. “There is already a de facto peace in the region, as well as the ongoing border delimitation process, and this adds a strong momentum towards normalisation,” Suleymanov said.
A peace agreement could also pave the way for a normalisation of relations between Armenia and Turkey.
The two countries have long been in dispute over the killing of as many as 1.5mn Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, with the two sides divided over the use of the term “genocide” to describe the historic events.
Ankara cut diplomatic and trade ties with the young Armenian state in 1993, backing Azerbaijan, which is ethnically Turkic, in the first major war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh ongoing at the time.
Talks have restarted since Azerbaijan took over the breakaway region in 2023, but have progressed slowly, with Ankara tying their success to the parallel Yerevan-Baku peace process.
However the two sides have recently eased visa regulations and discussed the reopening of the border to both road and rail transport, and to trade. On Thursday, Armenia’s Pashinyan said progress was on the horizon.
“If we do not cause very specific intentional harm to this process, in my opinion, the normalisation of Armenia-Turkey relations is now a matter of time,” the Armenian prime minister said.
