“There is going to be no new Armenia-Azerbaijan escalation, war,” Pashinian told the Armenian parliament. “There is going to be peace.”
“The text [of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty] has been agreed upon. So forget about an Armenia-Azerbaijan escalation or war,” he said.
Pashinian argued that the two South Caucasus countries have recognized each other’s territorial integrity through the draft treaty and affirmed their adherence to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration in which newly independent ex-Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders.
His remarks sharply contrasted with what Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told Turkish journalists in an interview publicized by the Armenian Foreign Ministry earlier on Thursday. Mirzoyan spoke to them during a weekend international forum held in the Turkish city of Antalya. He complained about Azerbaijan’s continuing preconditions for signing the peace treaty and refusal to accept Armenian proposals designed to address Azerbaijani concerns.
“The feeling is that they just don't want to finalize this normalization process, they are not going to build peace,” Mirzoyan said. “Moreover, we also from time to time see signs of escalation on the ground. We see this escalation in the rhetoric of Azerbaijani leadership, and unfortunately we see that this escalation has the potential to become an escalation on the ground as well.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev warned last week that Armenia will risk a “new military confrontation” with Azerbaijan unless it changes its constitution and meets other conditions set by Baku.
Pashinian admitted on Wednesday that he will try enact the kind of constitutional change that is demanded by Aliyev. His domestic critics maintain that Baku will not sign the peace deal before clinching further Armenian concessions not only on the constitution but also other key issues such as a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. Aliyev renewed in January this year his threats to open such a corridor by force.
Azerbaijan began accusing Armenia of violating the ceasefire regime along the border between the two countries on a virtually daily basis just a few days after the two sides finalized the draft treaty over a month ago. Armenian opposition figures and pundits have said that the accusations denied by Yerevan are aimed at preparing the ground for invading Armenia or forcing Pashinian to make the concessions.
Pashinian himself suggested in February that Azerbaijan is “trying to form the basis” for another military aggression against Armenia. He has since faced more opposition claims that his appeasement policy is only heightening the risk of the war.
