Armenia has replied to the latest edition of proposals from the Azerbaijani side regarding the draft peace treaty, an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
Ani Badalyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the matter concerns the eighth edition of the proposals that the sides first began to exchange in 2022.
In an interview with Armenian Public Television aired on Saturday Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that Armenia and Azerbaijan have so far reached several agreements as part of their continuous peace treaty negotiations, but that they remain divided on two main issues.
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He said those sticking points concerned mutual recognition of territorial integrity and the subsequent border delimitation process as well as the reopening of transport links in the region.
Mirzoyan said Yerevan and Baku had agreed several times at top-level meetings on recognizing each other’s territorial integrity based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, but that Azerbaijan showed a “reluctance” when it came to reflecting it in a draft treaty.
The announcement of Armenia’s reply to Azerbaijan follows two days of reported tensions along the border between the two South Caucasus nations, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the sporadic fire by Azerbaijani units at several sections of the border was an attempt to provoke an Armenian military response, triggering further escalation. It called on Azerbaijan to halt its actions.
The weekend border shooting came shortly after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian held a trilateral meeting in Brussels with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 5.
Azerbaijan had denounced the high-level trilateral negotiations of the European Union and the United States with Armenia as a demonstration of what its Foreign Ministry described as “the pro-Armenian position of the Western powers”, encouraging Yerevan to take “destabilizing actions” in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict zone.