Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said that his country and Azerbaijan can reach a peace agreement by the end of the year, stressing that his country is making every effort to achieve this.
Pashinyan added in a health brief carried by the Russian TASS news agency that the severe crisis in the Nagorno-Karabakh region is affecting the peace process, noting that a lot of time is being spent on the issue of closing the Lachin corridor and the humanitarian crisis in this region, stressing the need to devote this time and effort to discussing an agreement. peace.
The agency also quoted Pashinyan as saying that it is unlikely that any documents will be signed during his meeting with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev next October.
These statements come just two days after Yerevan and Baku exchanged accusations of escalating the situation and mobilizing military forces on the border.
The exchange of accusations came after Armenia confirmed that Azerbaijani forces moved towards the common border of the two countries and Azerbaijan announced that the positioning of Armenian forces on the border is a threat to the stability of the region.
Last Friday, Pashinyan described the situation on the border with Azerbaijan as “extremely tense.”
Azerbaijan is facing increasing pressure from the United States and Europe to reopen the Lachin Corridor, a road linking Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia that it closed last December.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which was separated from Baku after the war that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its population of 120,000 people is mostly Armenian.
