“We are still at the beginning of the road,” Mirzoyan told the Armenian parliament. “Peace is a long process. Peace requires care, concern and caution in terms of speaking, in terms of any document. After all, there is a long history of feud and bloodshed between the two peoples.”
“I will even say that if we sign soon the peace treaty [with Azerbaijan] we will still not be able to claim that everything is over and that peace has been fully established,” he said during the Armenian government’s question-and-answer session in the National Assembly. “Very simply put, we mean that for the time being the sides don’t shoot at each other, and the risk of an escalation is minimal and close to zero. But numerous problems remain.”
One of those problems, he went on, is Baku’s continuing refusal to free at least 23 Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan. The peace treaty that was initialed during the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump on August 8 does not call for their release.
While committing the two nations to recognize each other’s territorial integrity, the treaty does not specify in any way their long and heavily militarized border. Nor does it contain any mechanisms for the border’s delimitation. Armenian opposition leaders and other critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian say it will therefore not preclude fresh Azerbaijani attacks on Armenian border areas.
Baku continues to make the signing of the treaty conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution which it says lays claim to Azerbaijani territory. Despite publicly rejecting that precondition, Pashinian plans to hold a referendum on a new Armenian constitution. His political opponents have vowed to scuttle its passage.
Pashinian again defended the Washington agreements and declared that “peace has been established” between Armenia and Azerbaijan when he answered on Wednesday questions from lawmakers. He accused domestic opposition groups and unnamed external forces of seeking to “torpedo that peace.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday downplayed Pashinian’s agreements with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev brokered by Trump, saying that they may turn out to be a “flash in the pan.” Lavrov argued that “not everything was agreed upon there.”
Pashinian also pledged on August 8 to let the United States administer “unhindered communication” between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan through Armenia’s strategic Syunik province. Armenian opposition leaders say the transit link to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) would amount to the kind of an extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor” that has been sought by Azerbaijan ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian and other Armenian officials have denied this. Aliyev on Tuesday again referred to the TRIPP as the “Zangezur corridor,” however.
“There cannot be an infrastructure called ‘Zangezur Corridor’ in the territory of Armenia,” countered Pashinian.
The premier argued that relevant documents signed by him in Washington uphold Armenian sovereignty over Syunik. Still, he indicated that modern technology would be used to exclude physical contact between Armenian border and customs officers and Azerbaijani travelers.
Agnesa Khamoyan, an opposition parliamentarian, portrayed that statement as further proof that Pashinian has accepted Aliyev’s demands on the corridor.
The Azerbaijani president said ahead of the Washington talks that “Azerbaijani cargo and Azerbaijani citizens should not see the faces of Armenian border guards.”