US Commends Armenia, Azerbaijan On Historic Peace Agreement

The United States has praised Armenia and Azerbaijan for concluding negotiations on a "historic peace treaty," marking a significant step toward ending decades of hostilities between the two nations.

Armenia and Azerbaijan finalized the text of a peace agreement on March 13, which is aimed at establishing formal relations.

"The United States commends Armenia and Azerbaijan for concluding negotiations on a historic peace treaty," said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement.

"This is an opportunity for both countries to turn the page on a decades-old conflict in line with President [Donald] Trump's vision for a more peaceful world.

Baku and Yerevan were locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Armenian-backed separatists seized the mainly Armenian-populated region from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people.

Azerbaijan retook control of the Karabakh region from Armenian separatists in September 2023 following a lightning offensive.

In a Telegram post, the Armenian government said that the country's prime minister, Nikol Pashinian, had informed Russian President Vladimir Putin about the peace agreement during a telephone conversation.

In a statement, the Kremlin confirmed Pashinian's conversation with Putin, saying that the Russian president stressed that "Russia has always supported and continues to support the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations in the interests of ensuring security, stability, and sustainable socio-economic development in the Transcaucasian region."

Putin said that "Both Armenia and Azerbaijan can always count on any possible assistance from the Russian side in achieving these goals."

When Could The Peace Agreement Be Signed?

The key question now is when the agreement might be signed.

Azerbaijan insists that the treaty cannot be signed until Armenia amends its constitution and legal system to eliminate any mention of territorial claims over areas within Azerbaijan, primarily Karabakh.

The Last Soldier: Nobody Told Him The War In Nagorno-Karabakh Was Over

The current Armenian Constitution's preamble refers to a 1990 declaration of independence, made while Armenia was still a part of the Soviet Union, which calls for the reunification of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which was then a part of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan has argued that, as long as the claim to Karabakh remains enshrined in Armenian law, there will be a danger of governments after Pashinian going back on that declaration and relitigating its claims to Karabakh.

Speaking after the agreement, Pashinian played down the issue, saying that "the constitution of the Republic of Armenia does not have territorial claims against Azerbaijan or any other country." He expressed the view that "the agreed text of the peace agreement addresses and resolves all these concerns.”

However, Azerbaijani political commentator Rauf Mirgadirov told RFE/RL that the peace agreement would not be signed anytime soon.

"Any full-fledged peace agreement requires the unconditional recognition of each other's territorial integrity by the states. The probability that changes will be made to the Armenian Constitution in the next month or two is zero," Mirgadirov said.

Richard Giragosian, head of the Center for Regional Studies in Yerevan, agreed that constitutional amendments were a long-term process but not impossible to achieve.

"The constitutional amendments as a legal process will not be completed earlier than June 2026," he added.

There are other outstanding issues that could prevent the treaty being signed and relations normalized: the withdrawal of both sides' legal claims from international courts, unblocking regional transport routes, and addressing the status of prisoners of war.

In his statement, Rubio urged both sides to "commit to peace, sign and ratify the treaty, and usher in a new era of prosperity for the people of the South Caucasus."

The European Union also urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to sign the treaty as soon as possible after congratulating them on the peace agreement.

Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, commended both sides for their persistent work and said that the announcement of the peace agreement "represents a decisive step toward lasting peace and security in the region."