Aliyev Again Rules Out Unconditional Peace Deal with Armenia

BAKU — Dismissing repeated appeals from Yerevan and international community, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday reiterated his main preconditions for signing a peace deal with Armenia finalized last month.

Aliyev continued to insist on the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group and a change of Armenia’s constitution which Baku says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. He specifically demanded the removal of a reference to Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence contained in the constitution’s preamble. The declaration in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.

“After these two conditions are met, there will be no obstacles to signing the peace treaty,” Aliyev said after talks in Baku with Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “As they say, the ball is in Armenia’s court. If Armenia really wants to sign the peace treaty, it must accept these two legitimate conditions of Azerbaijan.”

Armenian leaders maintain that the reference does not amount to territorial claims to Azerbaijan, citing a corresponding conclusion drawn by Armenia’s Constitutional Court last September. They have also argued that the draft Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty commits the two states to recognizing each other’s territorial integrity and stipulates that they cannot refer to their domestic legislation to justify their possible failure to implement it.

The international community has also called for the quick signing of the peace deal. Steinmeier added his voice to those calls when he visited Yerevan on Monday. The German president made similar comments at a joint news conference with Aliyev.