Pashinyan hopes for effective talks with Baku after Azerbaijan's presidential election

YEREVAN, January 26. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed hope for effective negotiations with Azerbaijan after the presidential elections in that country scheduled for early February.

"I hope that after the presidential elections in Azerbaijan, the negotiation process between Yerevan and Baku will receive a full-fledged volume, which in turn will make it possible to finalize the process of concluding a peace treaty on the basis of already agreed and known principles," Pashinyan said at a joint press briefing with his Georgian counterpart Irakli Garibashvil in Tbilisi today.

Extraordinary presidential elections in Azerbaijan are scheduled for February 7, 2024.

Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Yerevan and Baku had agreed on 3 main principles that can contribute to the establishment of peace. These are mutual recognition by Armenia and Azerbaijan of each other's territorial integrity, demarcation and delimitation of the state border on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration and opening of all roads on the basis of mutual respect for sovereignty, jurisdiction and legislation of the countries.

On January 10 Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev renewed demands for an extraterritorial corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian southern region of Syunik bordering Iran. Aliyev argues that people and cargo transported to and from Nakhichevan through Armenia’s Syunik province must be exempt from Armenian border checks, which is strongly rejected by Yerevan.

Azerbaijan also rejects Yerevan’s proposal to delimit the Armenian-Azerbaijani border based on maps from the 1970 sand refuses to withdraw Azerbaijani troops from Armenia's sovereign territories occupied between May 2021 and September. -0-