Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov revealed the proposal at a news conference on Thursday. He did not say whether the Armenian side has already responded to it. There was no immediate reaction to Bayramov’s statement from Yerevan.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been scheduled to host Bayramov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Washington on November 20 for further negotiations on a peace treaty between the two South Caucasus nations. Baku cancelled the meeting in protest against what it called pro-Armenian statements made by James O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.
O’Brien visited Baku early this month in what appears to have been a failed bid to convince the Azerbaijani leadership to reschedule the cancelled meeting. A senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on December 19 that Washington must reconsider its “one-sided approach” to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict before it can mediate more peace talks.
Aliyev withdrew from talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian which the European Union had planned to host in October. The EU too has been accused by Baku or pro-Armenian bias. Armenian leaders have suggested that Aliyev is simply dragging his feet on the peace treaty in hopes of clinching more Armenian concessions.
Bayramov said on Thursday that Yerevan’s position on key details of the peace treaty has become more acceptable to Baku after Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive that led to its recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh. He did not shed light on that “progress” or the remaining differences between the two sides.
One of the key sticking points is their border disputes. Mirzoyan reiterated on Wednesday that the peace treaty should contain a concrete mechanism for delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border such as Soviet military maps printed in the 1970s.
Baku continues to oppose that. Bayramov insisted on delinking the border issue from the treaty. He also said that the signing of the treaty depends on the “political will” of the Armenian side.
“We hope to see the extent of that political will in the coming days,” added the Azerbaijani minister.
Armenian opposition leaders have warned Pashinian’s government against signing the peace accord before the border delimitation. They say that Baku wants to leave the door open for territorial claims to Armenia.